50 Million Jaime Fans Can’t Be Wrong

BOSWELL: Why, Sir, it is bruited through all London that Garrick holds the pictorial efforts of our Mr Hernandez in the utmost esteem.

JOHNSON: Garrick, Sir, can go fuck himself.

***

Sometimes people disagree — NEWS FLASH, right? People disagree about politics, science, religion, sports, the weather, what it’s got in its pocketses…and sometimes they disagree about art. Indeed, as you may have noticed, people around here sometimes politely disagree with other people about art.

My question isn’t how you should treat the reasons, evidence, arguments, etc. that they might put forward to bolster their opinion. Leave all that aside, too, and just consider the basic fact that they disagree with you. Is that fact, by itself, important enough that it should make you change your mind, if only a little?

Since the mid-2000s, this question has become a hot topic in epistemology — the philosophy of knowledge. Broadly speaking, there are two answers to the question:

(1) Resolution

and (2) Conciliation.

According to the resolute view, disagreement ain’t shit — you don’t have to do anything when you find someone who disagrees with you. You’re perfectly entitled to maintain your own belief exactly as strongly as you did before you learned that somebody disagreed with you; in other words, you can stand resolute. According to the conciliatory view, by contrast, disagreement is shit — it should make a difference to your belief. Exactly what difference, and how much, is up for grabs among philosophers who hold the conciliatory view; but they are united in believing that disagreement should make you at least a little less confident than you were before. (Stick with me; we’ll get to talking about comics eventually)

Here’s one way to think about what conciliation means. Picture all your thoughts as a big list of sentences written in your mental notepad. They might include:

2+2=4

The Earth revolves around the Sun

Caesar crossed the Rubicon

Barack Obama will win the 2012 US election

The moon is made of green cheese

2+2=5

and so on.

Some of these things you believe, and some you disbelieve. You believe some really, really strongly — like 2+2=4 — some less strongly — like, perhaps, the belief about Barack Obama; and similarly for the sentences you disbelieve. So now imagine that next to each sentence is a number between 0 and 1. 0 means “I think it’s definitely false”, 1 means “I think it’s definitely true”, and values in-between correspond to varying degrees of confidence. Now the list might look like this:

[1] 2+2=4

[0.999999] The Earth revolves around the Sun

[0.9995] Caesar crossed the Rubicon

[0.6] Barack Obama will win the 2012 US election

[0.0001] The moon is made of green cheese

[0] 2+2=5

On this picture, people disagree when they assign different numbers, or credences, to the same sentence. So maybe in my mental notepad, the sentence about Barack Obama has the number 0.6 next to it, whereas in Noah’s notepad it has the number 0.8 next to it. This would mean that I am less confident than Noah that Obama will be re-elected.

What conciliatory views say, in essence, is that when Noah and I discover our disagreement, we should revise our credences towards one another. Noah should be less confident about Obama’s chances, and I should be more — OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL. (We’ll get back to this caveat shortly).

Another name some people sometimes give to the conciliatory view is the Correct View. And by “some people”, I mean “me”, and by “sometimes”, I mean “right now”. I call it the Correct View for the simple reason that it is the correct view.

The basic motivation for holding the Correct View is this: when you find someone disagreeing with you, and you have no reason to think you’re in an epistemically better situation than they are — i.e. you’re not any smarter, or more informed, or less drunk, etc. — then you really don’t have any reason to think you’re more likely to be correct than they are. So the mere fact that someone like you has gone through the same process of reasoning and come to a different conclusion, that fact just by itself is some evidence that you might be wrong. It may be very weak evidence, and you may not have to “adjust your credence” — i.e. become more or less confident — very much, but it is some evidence, and you should adjust your credence to some extent. (As I said, just how much is up for grabs)

Here’s a hypothetical example: suppose Gilbert and Jaime are sitting at the table, trying to add up their joint profits from the most recent issue of Love and Rockets. (I told you we’d come back to comics)

Now, further suppose they go through their calculations separately, but using the same information and each using his own electronic calculator. And, finally, suppose that, at the end of all this, each brother arrives at a different total. Before they share their results with one another, each brother is fairly confident in his own calculation. But what happens when they share their results and realise that they disagree? According to the Correct View, each brother should become somewhat less confident in his own calculation.

And since, by definition, the Correct View is correct, this is just what they should do.

It’s important to remember that OTHER THINGS should be EQUAL when deciding how to react to disagreement. If Jaime knows that he is better at maths than Gilbert, then Jaime should not take Gilbert’s result as seriously, and hence should not reduce his own confidence as much (if at all); and vice versa. Similarly if Gilbert knows that Jaime’s calculator is broken; or Jaime knows that Gilbert forgot to count all the money; or Gilbert knows that Jaime wasn’t really paying attention; or…

The point being that you shouldn’t react to all disagreements in the same way. You should revise your confidence, down or up, only when you find that you disagree with someone who is in at least as good (roughly) an epistemic position as you — someone who is your epistemic peer. That’s why you don’t have to start believing that the end is nigh whenever you pass a religious fanatic on the street, or that global warming is a hoax when you watch Fox News, and so on — because these views arise from people in worse epistemic positions than you (or the proxies from whom you ultimately derive your opinions).

If you’ve followed me so far, you can probably see where this is going. As with opinions in general, I submit, so with opinions about art. In short: if you think a particular work of art is a piece of shit, but lots and lots of your epistemic peers think it’s the bees’ knees, you should seriously consider the possibility that you’re wrong. And maybe you should do this even if they can’t point to any convincing evidence in their favour.

Actually, this aesthetic conciliatory view follows from the Correct View only if we make a few extra assumptions. First, we have to assume that aesthetic sentences express propositions — or, to put it in English, that a sentence like “The Love Bunglers is one of the greatest comics of all time” is actually trying to describe how things are, rather than merely giving voice to your tastes. The former is like saying “I hurt my foot” or “I like ice cream”; the latter is like saying “Ow — my foot!” or “Ice cream — yum!” The former can be true or false, and even debated, but the latter cannot.

The second assumption is that the propositions expressed by aesthetic sentences are not entirely individualistic — that their truth does not depend solely on your reactions during the act of experiencing the art. If “The Love Bunglers is one of the greatest comics of all time” was merely a statement of how you felt about it, then, again, there’d be no room for disagreement. One person — let’s call him “Jeet” — could assert it, another — let’s call him “Noah” — deny it, and both could be speaking truly; just as one could truly say “I like ice cream” and the other “I don’t like ice cream”.

In other words, whatever makes some aesthetic opinions true and others false, it had better not be something that is entirely peculiar to whoever holds them.

Here’s one way aesthetic truth could depend on facts outside the individual: maybe the sentence “The Love Bunglers is one of the greatest comics of all time” is true only if The Love Bunglers properly reflects the Metaphysical Form of Beauty, which exists outside time and space, and doesn’t depend at all on what we humans think about beauty, trapped as we are in Plato’s cave.

Or, since that’s patently preposterous, maybe not.

Here’s a picture of aesthetic truth that is slightly more plausible. You have a set of preferences, values, likes and dislikes when it comes to art — let’s call them your tastes. Tastes are not permanently fixed, but they are usually stable over the short- to medium- term: if you like horror films today, then you’ll probably like them tomorrow. They can be very narrow or very broad: you might like films that are satires; and you might also like films that feature a combination of bicycles, conga lines, and references to Dante — in which case, have I got a film for you… And, crucially, although tastes vary from person to person, they are not entirely unique to each individual; you can share, to a greater or lesser extent, your preferences with other people. When you share your tastes with other people, we can say that you belong to an aesthetic community with those people; since you probably won’t share your tastes exactly with anyone else, you’re probably part of many different, partially overlapping communities.

This, for instance, is considered a thing of great beauty in some communities:

Aesthetic claims, in this picture, are made true by (1) the properties of the artwork in question and (2) the appropriate aesthetic community. The community sets the standards for judging the artwork, and the artwork itself either meets or fails to meet those standards. Which community is appropriate depends, basically, on who is considering the claim. So, in some communities, the sentence “Alex Ross is a great cartoonist” is true; in others, it’s false.

When a critic makes an aesthetic claim, then, it doesn’t make sense to ask whether it is true-full-stop (“true-period” for our benighted Yankee cousins). What must be asked, rather, is whether it is true given the standards of the appropriate aesthetic community. The advantage of this picture is that aesthetic claims turn out to be relative, but not solipsistic; their truth can meaningfully be debated between members of any particular community.

So, let’s go back to the issue of disagreement, with these two assumptions granted, namely: (1) aesthetic sentences can be true or false; and (2) their truth or falsity depends on more than just individual taste. As we saw, how you respond to disagreement depends on whether your disagreer (so to speak) is your epistemic peer. How you respond to aesthetic disagreement further depends on whether your disagreer is your aesthetic peer.

That means that, when you’re confronted with aesthetic disagreement, you need to ask yourself two questions. First, is my disagreer in a better position than me to appreciate the artwork, a worse position, or a roughly similar one? If the answer is “worse”, then you can safely ignore them; alternatively, you can publicly call them out in a blog post.

What sort of thing would determine your relative position to judge the artwork? Any number of things, including (but not limited to): who’s more familiar with the artist’s other work; who’s more familiar with other examples of the same genre; who knows more about the particular techniques involved; who’s wasted more years on a fine arts major; who can cite more passages of Lacan; etc. etc.

Anyway, if you decide that your disagreer is at least no worse off than you from an epistemic perspective — in terms of knowledge, expertise, intelligence, etc. — you can then move to the second question, viz. Is my disagreer addressing what I think is the appropriate community? Naturally, the answer to this depends on what you think the appropriate community is — and, equally naturally, this is a vexed and contentious decision.

More interesting are cases where you and your disagreer see yourself as sharing membership in at least one community. That’s where disagreement bites – – you’re now disagreeing about how the artwork in question (say, “The Love Bunglers”) lives up to, or falls short, of your shared tastes. And you can point to this or that feature in support of your opinion.

But — and here’s where we draw it all back together — if the Correct View is correct —

and it is, by definition

— then you should consider changing your mind even without being shown the opposing “evidence”. Because the fact that a member of the relevant aesthetic community has had one reaction to an artwork, and formed a particular view about it, that fact itself is evidence that your own view is mistaken. It’s evidence that, in fact, the artwork has a different relation to the community’s standards than the one you think: that it’s the bee’s knees, rather than a piece of shit. Or the other way around.

162 Comments

I think one problem is that in art there are lots of overlapping epistemic communities, and it’s difficult to determine exactly which one’s claims are better, or even if one’s claims are better. There’s also a built-in bias; that is, the people who are going to have read a work most closely, or most frequently, are always going to be people who like it, because people who don’t like it will just go read something else. Thus the marketing brilliance of Amazon’s user reviews.

I’d also disagree with the idea (offered tongue in cheek by you, of course) that in art disagreements you’re involved in some sort of zero sum game. In some cases (like, say, invading Iraq) I do think everyone should agree with me and that the world would be a better place if they did. But in art, I think it’s actually preferable to talk to people with different perspectives and different preferences. If everyone just chucked their own opinions about these things for the majority viewpoint — if everyone just decided that their desires, loves, and vision should be the same as everyone else’s — the world would be a much duller place.

I’m having a hard time getting the exact difference between the two views here, resolute vs. conciliatory. Isn’t the former merely an instance of the latter. That is, when you’ve figured that your disagreer isn’t an aesthetic or epistemic equal or is biased in some fashion (e.g., some knowledgeable people are going to love everything Jaime does and use all their knowledge to dismiss any problems the Love Bunglers has) you remain resolute? Is there really a epistemologist out there who believes that no matter how much more knowledgeable your opponent obviously is, that doesn’t matter, you should hold to your ignorant belief?

Just as a random note…I asked a surprising number of people for this roundtable who turned down writing about him because they were either indifferent or actively hostile to his work. So the dissenters are out there…perhaps like the truth.

Noah — I’m not sure we disagree about the value of pluralism in aesthetics. The view I’ve put forward (NB: I’m not sure I believe it myself) is relativist, which allows for a diversity of aesthetic responses.

The commonsense thing to say about your Iraq example is that there’s an actual fact of the matter about whether the US should be in Iraq, over and above the question of whether this person or that person *thinks* the US should be in Iraq. It might be that most people are wrong about whether the US should be in Iraq. It might even happen that everyone is wrong about it (supposing you and your peacenik “comrades” were all hit by a bus, and the only people left were pro-occupation).

The picture of aesthetics that I’ve put forward, however, is not like that. You think one thing about an artwork, somebody from a different community thinks something else, but there’s no further question of which of you is right. Supposing that your respective opinions accurately reflect the standards of the relevant communities, then there’s nothing more to be said — there’s a strong sense in which you’re not disagreeing.

Analogy: you say everyone should drive on the right side of the road; I say they should drive on the left. Once we realise we’re talking about different countries, there’s no question of which side people should *really* drive on. (This is a bad analogy in several ways, but hopefully none that affect the point here). There’s more to be said, but does that much help?

Charles — “Is there really a epistemologist out there who believes that no matter how much more knowledgeable your opponent obviously is, that doesn’t matter, you should hold to your ignorant belief?” Well, you know the line about no view being so absurd but that some philosopher has held it…but, no, I can’t actually think of someone who’s said this.

But the question isn’t how to respond to disagreement with an epistemic superior, it’s how to respond to disagreement with an epistemic peer. And there are lots of people who hold the resolute view about that, because the conciliatory view is radically sceptical. Take something like the mind-body problem. Not to be too modest, but I don’t have any good reason to think that I’m smarter than Descartes. But I don’t know whether he was smarter than me, either. So let’s suppose we’re epistemic peers. That means (on a conciliatory view) I should regard dualism as (at least somewhat) less ridiculous than I currently do, and should be less confident in whatever view I hold about the mind-body problem (either functionalism or eliminativist materialism, depending on the day of the week). And this is so, even though I think there’s lots of good arguments against dualism!

Similarly for e.g. religious belief. A Christian doesn’t have any good reason (other than special pleading) to think she’s epistemically better off than a Muslim, Hindu, Norse pantheist, Scientologist etc. So, if you take the conciliatory view, she should become less confident in her particular creed. This is why Alvin Plantinga, who desperately wants to have his Christian cake and intellectually responsibly eat it, is one of the strongest champions of the resolute view.

Okay, then I’m not understanding something, I think. If pluralism is good, and different epistemic communities are just following different rules and aren’t disagreeing with each other, why should I change my view about Jaime just because other people like him? That is, I don’t like Jaime, you do like Jaime…but either that difference is neutral (i.e., I drive on the left over here, you drive on the right over there) or else it’s actually a good thing to have differences. Why then should your opinion make me change mine?
The first analogy seems to vitiate the logical argument for doing so (one opinion is no better or worse than the other) and the second appears to vitiate any moral reason for doing so (two opinions are better than one, so why turn two opinions into one?)

Feyerabend is a philosopher who argues that you shouldn’t change your opinion on the basis of another’s greater knowledge, right? He argues that minority knowledge’s are vital both morally and scientifically; he’s absolutely on the side of flat earthers.

Hmmm, I may not have explained myself well. Ah, I think maybe I’ve got it. The view here — let’s call it “my view”, but I reserve the right to repudiate it without notice — consists of two independent theses:

(1) a general conciliation thesis, and
(2) relativism about the truth of aesthetic judgements

As I say, (1) is a general thesis. It applies to disagreements about e.g. mathematical calculations, as in my example of Gilbert and Jaime. And it applies to disagreements about metaphysics, the weather, supernatural beings such as gods, history, world events, etc.

(And, yes it applies to disagreements about resolution v. conciliation, thus leading to potential paradox. i.e. since Plantinga et al. reject conciliation, I should become less confident of it myself, but if I’m less confident about conciliation, then I should think it’s okay to stand resolute in my earlier belief in conciliation, which UH OH PARADOX. I gather there are technical attempts to get around this, but I don’t know any details and suspect that, sadly, there probably is no way around it)

The thing about conciliation, however, is that it can only apply to things (sentences, propositions, beliefs?) that can be true or false — that purport to represent things how they are. If you say “yum, ice cream!” and I say “yuck, ice cream!”, it’s not as though I should be all conciliatory and start saying “yuck-ish, ice cream, but I’m not sure, so maybe yum-ish, actually!”

So, when we consider aesthetic responses, the question becomes whether those can be cashed out at all as true or false. If not, then (a) there’s a straightforward sense in which there are no genuine aesthetic disagreements (what would we be disagreeing about?), and so (b) the question of resolution or conciliation doesn’t apply.

That’s why I bring in relativism about aesthetics, then, to provide what I take to be the most plausible picture of how aesthetic sentences can be true or false. And, since relativism requires something for the relative thing to be relative *to*, I introduce the nebulous idea of an aesthetic community defined by a shared set of tastes.

This is supposed to be a kind of “just-right”, middle-ground relativism. If aesthetic sentences were relative to individuals, then again there’d be no room for disagreement: “Jaime roolz!” might be true if uttered by me and false if uttered by you, and there’s just no question about which of us is correct and which mistaken. But, on the other hand, relativising them to something like “cultures” or “societies” seems too coarse-grained, since tastes surely differ within cultures. Hence communities defined by common taste.

This allows for pluralism about the validity of different aesthetic communities. There really is no god’s-eye-view from which to choose between communities that laud Jaime and those that jeer. But it doesn’t mean, to borrow a phrase from Feyerabend, anything goes. For any given community, either an artwork stands in one relation to that community’s standards, or it stands in another. Either the artwork is “good” or “beautiful” or “challenging” or “inventive” or whatever, for that community, or it isn’t. And that’s something that members of a community can disagree about, and when you find yourself in disagreement with a fellow community member, you should conciliate.

(Note that this cuts both ways. If you should give Jaime benefit of more doubt, then the existence of gadflies like you should make his fans give him less doubt…although since there are more of them than there are of you, the respective revisions probably shouldn’t be symmetrical)

In cases of apparent aesthetic disagreement, then, the question becomes which community we are talking about…and that’s always up for grabs. For instance, when reading the online folks I linked to in the post, the key to not having an apoplexy is to realise that they’re not really talking about (say) the greatest cartoonists of all time. They’re talking about the greatest cartoonists of all time as judged by the standards of a very small and peculiar set of readers. (To pinch a line from Alan David Doane, most readers of superhero comics think they’re comic fans, when they’re really just superhero fans).

By contrast, one way to make sense of Domingos’ project (to the extent that I’ve grasped it) is that he’s trying to get us all to expand the boundaries of the community we use for judging comics. Just as superhero-fans are a peculiarly constricted subset of comics fans, so are comics fans a peculiarly constricted subset of people who like art. And just as we TCJ-reading types look down on the superhero crowd with smug derision, so should people who like art look on us. We’re just baby-men with a slightly bigger vocabulary.

Anyway, the reason the debate over Jaime has teeth is that the different sides take themselves to belong to at least some overlapping communities. We could form communities along a Jaime split, everyone who likes him on one side and everyone else on the other. And then it would be trivially true that Jaime roolz or Jaime droolz, depending on which community one belonged to. But that’s not how it’s gone. You and Spurgeon and Nadel et al. are debating Jaime’s merits and demerits by a set of standards which you share.

Long story short: nothing makes one set of standards the right or wrong ones (hence pluralism). But given a set of agreed standards, either some things meet them or they don’t; and if you disagree with somebody about whether a work meets them or doesn’t, you should conciliate. That doesn’t mean you have to enjoy the work, or even engage with it; you just have to acknowledge that maybe it is better than you thought. Alternatively, and I could have discussed this at even GREATER length, you could realise that you don’t all belong to the same community after all. I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of people out there who, when they think of HU at all, don’t think you belong to the same community/ies as them.

I guess I’m thinking that there may be a couple of things left out which might be worth talking about. Specifically, you’re assuming that different community standards are essentially equal; that there’s no particular way to or reason to judge them. Part of why these arguments can get fairly intense, though, is that everybody doesn’t agree with that. For instance, one of the main things TCJ’s community has against superhero fans is that they effectively treat creative people like shit, or at least are willing to see creative people treated like shit. Similarly, arguments around Crumb, for example, can end up being in part about issues of racism and sexism, and (by implication, at least) that then raises the question of what it means that he’s so central to a particular kind of comics community.

The point is maybe that when you start talking about communities, it’s hard not to stumble into issues of politics and also of ethics. Some communities believe racism is okay; some believe it isn’t. Should the second be slightly swayed to think that racism is a little more okay? What about in the past when most people believed it was? Arguments about comics aren’t that fraught (to say the least) but that doesn’t mean they’re not fraught at all. People do have stakes in these things that go beyond preferring the red jelly bean to the blue jelly bean (in general — there may be some people who find that decision very fraught, for all I know.)

Maybe the point is, you’re essentially saying, “all other things being equal, hold your own opinions lightly.” And I’m just somewhat skeptical that all other things are ever that equal.

You make things seem too clear cut. As always, they’re not, as Noah says above. My epic struggles at the duly named TCJ‘s meessboard happened precisely because “TCJ-reading types [never] look[ed] down on the superhero crowd with smug derision[.]” That’s a stereotype. I don’t know much about Gary Groth’s tastes, but I know (because he said so) that Kim Thompson has a pretty average comics community taste (his only eccentricity, being an American, that is, is his taste for the European comics he grew up with). Another proof of what I’m saying is TCJ‘s best English language 100 comics list: there’s not much in there (in the top ten, at least) that a body couldn’t expect from the comics community. (I know that most of these comics aren’t necessarily for children. I’m not calling babymen to everybody.)

Anyway, this is just to say that I’m in a Quixotic position fighting in a no man’s land between the comics community and the community of art gallery goers and lit readers. The former hate me and the latter don’t know that I even exist (comics aren’t part of their lives, anyway…)

The invention of the commercial strategy known as “graphic novel” achieved something at least. I just ruffled some feathers with no visible effect…

What do you have against fleshy eyeballs Ice cream, James? Are you some sort of snob or something?

I think what Domingos is talking about is the way in which different aesthetic communities can overlap in complicated ways. TCJ and fandom (and fanzines for that matter) are definitely intertwined, or at least overlapping.

Jones: “That [Descartes was likely smarter than all of us combined]means (on a conciliatory view) I should regard dualism as (at least somewhat) less ridiculous than I currently do, and should be less confident in whatever view I hold about the mind-body problem (either functionalism or eliminativist materialism, depending on the day of the week). And this is so, even though I think there’s lots of good arguments against dualism!”

Knowledge isn’t the same as brilliance or intelligence. I know for a fact that my mind isn’t on the level of St. Thomas of Aquinas, but I also know he was wrong about what he mostly devoted that substantial amount of cogitation to (there just are no good arguments for his God, even though some of them are quite brilliant — and aesthetically beautiful). The same could be said of Cartesian dualism (though I’m more sympathetic to it than you, I suppose, due to my love of mystical-sounding emergent properties). Fact is, there are a lot of really smart people who make really good arguments about stuff that simply doesn’t exist. Plantinga has the faith, which he’s going to say a lot of smart stuff about, but I’ve never found the arguments for the basis of his faith very convincing. There is no rational basis for religious beliefs (by which I mean that there are no good arguments for the beliefs themselves, not that they don’t serve some rationally defensible function, such as regulating behavior or whatnot — e.g., Pascal’s wager doesn’t lead to belief in a god, a change of heart, just an attempt to fool that god should it exist). I don’t think you have to commit to Christianity to see that some Christians are smarter than you. And just because you recognize that a Christian is either smarter than you or an intellectual peer, you need not compromise your own lack of belief in his fundamentals. Plantinga should come around to atheism not because many of his intellectual peers are, but because he’s wrong about the theist proposition.

“But the question isn’t how to respond to disagreement with an epistemic superior, it’s how to respond to disagreement with an epistemic peer.”

But if you shouldn’t necessarily come around to the questionable belief of an epistemic superior, then surely that would entail whether you should come around to an equal, right? Herbert Spencer was a pretty smart guy. Many eugenicists were smart people. But so what? You’ll change your beliefs, moderate them, or try to come up with better arguments if you think that another person is giving you cause for concern. At least, you should, even if the troubling proposition comes from an epistemic inferior. If Plantinga really felt that Scientologists were providing him with reasons for questioning his fundamental beliefs, he’d moderate them. But he doesn’t. And I don’t see why he should: there’s no better reasons for Scientology than Christianity.

And I’m not so sure that pluralistic realism/world-building/relativistic objectivism/your “communities” gets around all of that. Either you’re committed to the foundational beliefs of a particular community, or you’re not. And if you can see that such a belief is relative to a community, then you’re not really committed. You can, however, appreciate the brilliance with which one is capable of reasoning granting a commitment to the fundamental belief. I can say that if I were a Platonist and a Christian, Anselm would be very convincing. You’ll be conciliatory when you agree on some essentials, yes, but resolute when you don’t.

I prefer to assimilate views that are strongly felt and reasoned when they are coming from an actual person. I sign my name to my opinions on this site, right or wrong. Let’s say hypothetically that I write something disagreeable about DC Comics and that is seen by them as a good reason to cease to deal with me—-that is because I live with the consequences of what I put out here. So, I can’t help but think that I am more invested than someone who does not sign their name, that does not stand behind their opinions. If “Jones, one of the Jones boys” comments to something I’ve written, well, he has a gendered pseudonym (which may or may not be true) so I know I am supposed to take it that it is a man writing, but that’s pretty much all I have to go on in making my mind up whether or not to give a shit what they are saying… I can’t count that the writer even believes any of what they are writing. “Some (perhaps a) dude” says….etc.

“if you can see that such a belief is relative to a community, then you’re not really committed.”

I don’t think that’s exactly true. Or at least, I think Hauerwas would argue that separating belief and community in that way is already a flawed argument, which is why he’d probably disagree with Plantinga too (from the little I’ve seen of the later.) That is, revelation is based in the Christian community, which is, for Hauerwas, what makes it true, not what makes it relative.

Or to look at it another way, the argument that truth should be a universal to which we assent, rather than a community to which we pledge faith, is itself the move that makes Christianity unworkable. So Hauerwas would agree with Charles that Aquinas and Plantinga can’t possibly prove Christian belief in the way they would like.

I feel like the way Jones’ argument turns belief into abstracted negotiable bartering chips seems like a hallmark of analytic philosophy in a lot of ways. This post makes me see the appeal of that more than I generally do though — it can obviously be quite entertaining.

I’m not quite understanding your objection, Noah. Hauerwas is committed to the belief in God, which isn’t relative to him, but the Truth, right? What I was saying is that if you recognize that such a belief is relative to, say, upbringing, you’re not going to be committed, and not willing to be conciliatory to Hauerwas’ belief. One can recognize relativism only from the outside, it seems to me.

James, I use my own name too, obviously…but there are lots of reasons for people to use pseudonyms, both professional and personal. I don’t think George Eliot and George Orwell were less invested in what they had to say because they used a different name to say it.

Charles… Hauerwas would say that you’re whole approach is messed up, I think. Christianity isn’t an abstract list of doctrines (God exists; Christ rose, etc.) It’s a community, a practice,and a faith. The distinction you’re making between a universal truth and a truth relative to a particular background or community is, he’d argue (I think) nonsense. The Christian revelation is true because it’s rooted in a particular community and history, not despite the fact that it is.

Truth is a context, a community, and a faith, not a logical principle that can be separated from those things. Belief in God isn’t something that you choose; it chooses you and makes you. So the goal of Christianity isn’t to convince people of a set of doctrines, but rather to keep faith with the community — and perhaps to welcome others into it.

Jones point seems relatively straightforward to me. The main point is just that if a large number of people with as much information and intelligence as you have disagree, you might want to at least consider what they’re saying and look again at your own opinions with a bit more skepticism. He doesn’t say “change your mind immediately”…and he’s not talking about opinions which are based on “faith” (like belief in God, etc.) wherein no logical argument is really even admissable. The whole argument just revolves around being open to the possibility that you may be wrong (and the fact that seeing so many alternative opinions may bring you closer to that possibility).

I also think that Jones’ pseudonymous status is irrelevant. He’s not saying “change your mind because I say so—” He’s saying, “Consider changing your mind because many trustworthy and equal peers of yours (many of whom have actual names) say so.” If he were to dramatically reveal his true name, that’s just one additional “real person” added to a large number of real people we’re already dealing with. What’s one more or less? The logic of his argument isn’t undercut by the fact that he’s not using his own name.

I’m not sure I agree with Jones….but the argument doesn’t seem to me that difficult to see. Responding seems to boil down to the question of whether or not we can consider ANYONE’s opinions (other than our own) relevant in the judgment of art. If the answer is “no” (which seems reasonable to me, under the idea that aesthetic responses are ultimately subjective), then Jones’ argument falls apart.

I happen to agree with Jones that our tools of judging art tended to be community/socially-based…so, on those grounds, there is certainly some merit to considering how, if the vast majority of the community tells me I’m wrong, I might want to think again (not automatically change my mind, mind you, but consider the possibility that I may be missing something–that the fault may lie with me, not the work in question).

I mean, I shouldn’t pick on Jones in particular, there’s other pseudonyms that contribute here (and all around the internet), but it just occurred to me. Of course we’re all labelled one way or another, we’re things that live in boxes within artificial boundaries called properties, towns, states, countries.

Noah, there are communities who believe true propositions and false. Which community believes them has no bearing on whether these propositions are true or false. I agree that Christianity is a community, a practice and a faith (or overlapping sets of these things), but without some particular doctrine about what’s supposedly true, it’s not Christianity. And it’s pure nonsense to say that Christianity is true because it’s rooted in Christianity. It’s true that Christianity exists because of the existence of its customs et al., but that doesn’t mean it says anything true. I was born into Christianity and reasoned my way out of it. Others can, too. Pretending like circular reasoning is good reasoning doesn’t do anyone any good, as far as I can see (well, it serves those in power). If Hauerwas really believes such stuff, then he should be ignored … resolutely.

Eric, I think that makes what Jones is saying a fairly trivial recommendation for discourse. Yes, we should be open enough to see problems in our beliefs. But I’m taking him to mean that independent of actual problematic arguments (that we take as problematic to our own position), we should still modify our beliefs because of the mere disagreement with peers. That is, even if we think we have good arguments to disprove our peers, we still should be more doubtful of our own position because it is our peers disagreeing. I’d say that we should become doubtful in such a situation if we think our peers are saying something plausible, not just because they’re our peers. Of course, if we’re part of the same community, we’re more likely to listen to each other than to some outsider who shares no premises with us.

James, the reason I use a pseudonym is the same reason that Spider-Man does: to protect his loved ones against reprisals from his enemies. Actually, it started as a way of controlling google searches for my real name — I didn’t want the first things that prospective employers find, when they google me, to be a whole bunch of nonsense about something so trivial as comics. But I feel you, man. I’ve been feeling increasingly ridiculous with this pseudonym; it makes it hard to be taken seriously. I can email you my real name so that, next time you’re in Sydney, you can come around and punch me in the face, personally.

Charles, a few things. First, on the question of intelligence versus knowledge as a constituent of epistemic peerage. (jesus christ, what a terrible sentence) Yeah, totally, respective degree of knowledge is important, but I think intelligence is, too. But I’m not sure how to argue for that. Anyway, the Descartes example was ill-chosen, since it’s obvious that there are important ways in which I’m his epistemic superior in ways that matter for the mind-body problem. We just know a whole lot more stuff about psychology than he did. (Arguably our superior knowledge of physics also gives us more reason to believe in the causal closure of the universe, which is another strike against dualism). Let’s just repeat the argument with Dave Chalmers subbed in for Descartes; I don’t think I know any more about perceptual psychology than Chalmers, or more about the philosophical arguments for and against dualism, so I should take his patently dunder-headed view more seriously, much as it bloody pains me to say so.

Second, the idea of conciliation is, to repeat, that the mere fact of disagreement with a peer provides some evidence against your view. You might continue to think that the weight of the evidence lies with your view (e.g. all the good arguments are on your side). But, to the extent that you ought to apportion your degree of belief in accordance with the evidence, then you ought to lower your credence when you find disagreement, because disagreement by itself is evidence.

Which is why I said that conciliation is disquietingly sceptical. It forces you into taking — to some extent — the position of Joe Sixpack about your own beliefs. By that, I mean the position of e.g. someone who doesn’t know anything about policy when they try to decide which political side to believe: Democrats say one thing, but Republicans say another, so I oughtn’t put all my faith in what one side says about e.g. healthcare. You need to abstract from the content of what you yourself believe and just focus on the fact of disagreement. It’s hard, and kind of ridiculous, to do that when you think there are clearly really good arguments and/or empirical evidence on your side.

But remember that ceteris have to be paribus. If I think, for instance, that there’s a good undermining explanation for Plantinga’s beliefs, then they don’t count as evidence against mine. And there are pretty good undermining explanations for Plantinga’s beliefs — one reason why I don’t take his resolute view so seriously is precisely because it’s “motivated cognition”. He really wants to hold that view, because if it’s right then all the other philosophers shouldn’t laugh at him so much for still believing in the bible. Similarly when I read a press release against the reality of climate change, if that press release was funded by the coal industry. Or if I meet a climate change denier who shows herself to be ignorant of the relevant science (or even just over-estimates the proportion of scientists on her side). And so on.

Sadly, this cuts both ways. Plantinga, even if he believed in conciliation, doesn’t need to put less faith in theism just because I’m an atheist (or, since why would he give a fuck about me, because Dennett is, and so-and-so is, and such-and-such…). We’re actually not his epistemic peers when it comes to the relevant philosophical arguments for the existence of god, because we have better things to do than waste our time responding to preposterous special pleading.

Finally, the relativism I was proposing was for aesthetic judgements only. There’s just no fact of the matter about whether my community is right that Alex Ross sucks big time, or Comic Book Guy’s community is right that he’s the greatest thing since Thomas Kinkade. It’s consistent with aesthetic relativism that there are plenty of other domains that aren’t relative, like metaphysics or mathematics or ethics. Which is just as well, since I personally have a hard time understanding how (e.g.) it might be true-for-Plantinga that God exists but false-for-me.

Noah, you make a good point about reasons for choosing between different communities. I’d just say that those reasons are extra-aesthetic. That is to say, my reason for choosing my community over Comic Book Guy’s isn’t that my side has a greater grasp on the aesthetic truth — thumps fist on table and insists “damn it, Alex Ross is *objectively* rubbish!” (Poor Alex Ross, to be my whipping boy) I expect you’ll jump in here to say that it’s simple-minded to suppose that aesthetics is separate from ethics and politics — but to say so is already to concede the main point of my relativism, which is that there are no absolute aesthetic truths as such. (I want to write more, at another time, about the relation between ethics and aesthetics)

Incidentally, though I’m pretty confident that conciliation is right, I’m much less confident about aesthetic relativism. I definitely think there are no absolute aesthetic truths — how could there be? — but there are a range of views consistent with that, and I’m not sure relativism is the best one.

Yes, communities overlap in complicated ways, I agree 100%. I could have written several thousand more words about how actual communities are vague and porous and contested and all that. And remember that it’s already part of the picture that everyone belongs to lots of different aesthetic communities. Much aesthetic debate, I think, revolves around which community is relevant to the discussion at hand, and where to draw the boundaries.

Finally-finally, being entertaining is independent of doing analytic philosophy, alas. Trust me, most of the latter is as drearily turgid as anything else in the Academy.

I think the difficulty here is that you believe that reason is a way to find truth that is not embedded in either communities or practice. Hauerwas doesn’t agree with that; he’d say that you’ve just shifted epistemic communities, rather than that you’ve found an absolute path to truth.

And circular reasoning always looks bad on the other guy. But reason and universal abstracted truth claims are used to bolster power as well, and are often reluctant (Hauerwas argues) to acknowledge their relationship to power or to interests.

“And it’s pure nonsense to say that Christianity is true because it’s rooted in Christianity.”

It’s something of a paradox, yes. But faith isn’t supposed to be reasonable. Hauerwas is arguing that if you believe it, it’s true as a narrative and a life, not as a logical proposition.

“Much aesthetic debate, I think, revolves around which community is relevant to the discussion at hand, and where to draw the boundaries.”

I agree with that.

James, re pseudonyms — one thing to consider is that their use is at least somewhat gendered, or at least that’s my anecdotal impression. Women can have a lot of good reasons to use pseudonyms, including avoiding stalkers. There’s an article about the issue here.

Please do write about the ethics/aesthetics thing. It’s the same as the form/content relation. Alex Ross is basically a Socialist Realist/Fascist painter. Am I suppose to forget that while admiring his visual art’s technical execution? I see three problems (and an excuse) with the comics community’s set of criteria: (1) the visual art’s craft is overrated; (2) the lit part is completely ignored; (3)the dubious political content is excused in the name of the sacred cows’ worshipping cult. The excuse is a Modernist argument in favor of comics exceptionalism. I will never accept that Hergé was a better artist than Guido Buzzelli… Relativism or no relativism I have my reasons to think so… Others who think otherwise, I’m not so sure…

I have to say, personally, I really do tend to take community opinions seriously. I wouldn’t pay any attention at all to Dan Clowes or Jaime or Gilbert or Spiegelman if other people’s enthusiasm hadn’t made me question my initial reaction of thoroughgoing indifference. Dirk Deppey’s discussion of Marston/Peter Wonder Woman made me revisit my initial disinterest in that as well…. I think it’s actually a difficult thing to avoid, being influenced by other’s opinions. A lot of who you are is who you talk to.

Oh dear. Jones, I have no wish to punch you in the face! It would be terrible if writing on HU would be cause for reprisals against anyone’s loved ones. I did search you on Google though to see if you were real, and only found you under your assumed moniker here and on other lists weighing forth, so I guess you are safe. Of course, to me comics aren’t trivial, but that’s because I’m personally invested in the art form. And I guess that’s the only real division between us, as we poor boxed-in creatures furiously poke at the keys with our stiff little tentacles.

…in art, I think it’s actually preferable to talk to people with different perspectives and different preferences…
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And not just in art; as a comment about an article in The New Yorker (debunking the premise in “brainstorming” that it should be a no-no to criticize any suggestions put forth) pointed out…

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It turns out that groups are much more creative (both in quantity and quality of ideas) if they are encouraged both to put forth ideas and to criticize them. Debating ideas—defending them and modifying them to address critiques—is more productive than uncritical brainstorming. This does not surprise me, as some of the most productive collaborations I’ve had involved back-and-forth debates about the best ways to do things, which each of us working hard to show that our idea was better (but backing off when the other really did have a better idea—a pissing match is even less productive than brainstorming).
——————————–http://gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/brainstorming-doesnt-really-work-the-new-yorker/

And just last night, read a Smithsonian magazine article about how “The world’s leading expert on bee behavior [Thomas Seeley] discovers the secrets of decision-making in a swarm”:

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When you consider a swarm one bee at a time this way, it starts to look like a heap of chaos. Each insect wanders around, using its tiny brain to perceive nothing more than its immediate surroundings. Yet, somehow, thousands of honeybees can pool their knowledge and make a collective decision about where they will make a new home, even if that home may be miles away.

The decision-making power of honeybees is a prime example of what scientists call swarm intelligence. Clouds of locusts, schools of fish, flocks of birds and colonies of termites display it as well…

Through years of study, Seeley and his colleagues have uncovered a few principles honeybees use to make these smart decisions [when searching for an ideal new “home” for their swarm]. The first is enthusiasm. A scout coming back from an ideal cavity will dance with passion, making 200 circuits or more and waggling violently all the way. But if she inspects a mediocre cavity, she will dance fewer circuits.

Enthusiasm translates into attention. An enthusiastic scout will inspire more bees to go check out her site. And when the second-wave scouts return, they persuade more scouts to investigate the better site.

The second principle is flexibility. Once a scout finds a site, she travels back and forth from site to hive. Each time she returns, she dances to win over other scouts. But the number of dance repetitions declines, until she stops dancing altogether. Seeley and his colleagues found that honeybees that visit good sites keep dancing for more trips than honeybees from mediocre ones.

This decaying dance allows a swarm to avoid getting stuck in a bad decision. Even when a mediocre site has attracted a lot of scouts, a single scout returning from a better one can cause the hive to change its collective mind.

“It’s beautiful when you see how well it works,” Seeley said. “Things don’t bog down when individuals get too stubborn. In fact, they’re all pretty modest. They say, ‘Well, I found something, and I think it’s interesting. I don’t know if it’s the best, but I’ll report what I found and let the best site win.’”

During the time I visited Seeley, he was in the midst of discovering a new principle. Scouts, he found, purposefully ram one another head-on while deciding on a new nest location. They head-butt scouts coming from other locations—pink [-labeled] scouts bumping into blue [-labeled] scouts and vice versa—causing the rammed bee to stop dancing.?As more scouts dance for a popular site, they also, by head-butting, drive down the number of dancers for other sites.

Alas, as memorably argued in Ardrey’s The Territorial Imperative, humans are not only content to do as many animals do, and capture/defend physical territory, but do so as well in territories of the mind. Criticisms of dearly-held beliefs in religion, philosophy, politics, economics, views about themselves and the world are ferociously resisted — no matter how deflatingly accurate the “attacks” might be — because people see those beliefs as vital to their very existence, worldview. Even when those are actively self-destructive. (Go try telling an anorexic that she’s not “too fat” or a clinically-depressed person that they are actually fine human beings, whose friends and family really do care for them, for instance.)

And “Occupy Wall Street” could’ve used some head-butting! An article on the movement’s origins told how one meeting was bogged down by a performance artist from Greece who refused to follow the rules for debate, continuously held and dominated the floor while attacking and suggesting countless changes on the movement’s planned website — though totally ignorant on website creation herself — eventually driving away the guy who was actually going to create the website, and making many others finally leave in disgust.

Actually, a baseball bat to the knees would’ve been more appropriate in this case. (Horrified cry: “Ooooh! He’s advocating violence against women!” No, I’m advocating violence against jerks, their gender being irrelevant.)

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Noah Berlatsky says:

…If pluralism is good, and different epistemic communities are just following different rules and aren’t disagreeing with each other, why should I change my view about Jaime just because other people like him? That is, I don’t like Jaime, you do like Jaime…but either that difference is neutral (i.e., I drive on the left over here, you drive on the right over there) or else it’s actually a good thing to have differences. Why then should your opinion make me change mine?
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There are times when you’re just plain wrong; however, here, your “meh” attitude toward Jaime’s work is pretty aesthetically defensible. You’re not saying he’s an utterly worthless, incompetent creator (which would be going too far). However, his work and approach are lacking in qualities you find memorable or interesting.

As I’d mentioned when arguing against the idea that “what good art is, is only a matter of opinion,” even knowledgeable, perceptive critics can significantly disagree about the same works because each may value some qualities more than others.

I.e., one critic may hold originality to be a more important factor in valuing the quality of a work; another may consider emotional or intellectual depth; others may consider mastery of technique higher on the scale, or that it has philosophical concepts brought to life…

However, this does not translate into giving equal respect to some doltish ignoramus saying, “Transformers III is the greatest movie of all time, because it has the most AWESOMENESS!!!”

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Domingos Isabelinho says:

The bias against comics that Jones fears is very real in the real world. I don’t blame people for this bias, though. I blame the comics community’s ridiculous comics canon.
—————————————-

Your knowledge and tastes are certainly topnotch; however, this is again a case where the “comics canon” — which doesn’t include what would truly be ridiculous, like the oeuvre of Rob Liefeld — has been determined by those who don’t value the factors you do as much. To you, “adultness,” intellectual depth, writing that must match the drawing ability on display, are essentials.

However, the comicscenti predominantly give greater weight to qualities such as historic importance, a richly-realized, substantial body of work, technical mastery, skilled deployment of the art form. To most in that group, visual superlativeness outweighs mediocre stories. I.e., Toth and Krigstein — hardly fanboy faves — get high rankings in spite of mostly so-so scripts.

Noah Berlatsky: “Christianity isn’t an abstract list of doctrines (God exists; Christ rose, etc.) It’s a community, a practice,and a faith. The distinction you’re making between a universal truth and a truth relative to a particular background or community is, he’d argue (I think) nonsense. The Christian revelation is true because it’s rooted in a particular community and history, not despite the fact that it is. Truth is a context, a community, and a faith, not a logical principle that can be separated from those things. Belief in God isn’t something that you choose; it chooses you and makes you. So the goal of Christianity isn’t to convince people of a set of doctrines, but rather to keep faith with the community — and perhaps to welcome others into it.”

Then what basis do Christians have for criticizing society outside of their community? I would hope that Christians would take exception to being made an island in a sea of relativism. I’m no expert, but I was also under the impression that they were still kind of stuck on God existing and Jesus having risen from the dead. Are you saying Christians no longer need to believe those planks? Doesn’t it reduce them to make them dependent on a community context?

“I think the difficulty here is that you believe that reason is a way to find truth that is not embedded in either communities or practice. Hauerwas doesn’t agree with that; he’d say that you’ve just shifted epistemic communities, rather than that you’ve found an absolute path to truth. And circular reasoning always looks bad on the other guy. But reason and universal abstracted truth claims are used to bolster power as well, and are often reluctant (Hauerwas argues) to acknowledge their relationship to power or to interests.”

Nobody acts in perfect accordance with truth and reason, but those principles offer a basis on which people can resolve their differences. Someone who at least attempts to justify his views as rational and supported by evidence is entering an arena for critical examination. That system at least allows the possibility of correction, as opposed to appeals to tribe and mystical/divine ordainment which do not, and overcome opposition with force or conversion. The reality is that people who claim to reject truth and reason still rely on them, I’d like to see anybody actually do without, and are only dismissing any basis for criticizing their position. I wouldn’t trust anyone who did that and I wouldn’t be interested in joining a community of such people.

On topic: An evaluation of art is more complicated and subjective than that of straightforward truth-claims, but Jaime Hernandez’s work uses a variety of character types and observations of human experience for a complex statement which relates to reality and invites thought while Alex Ross’s work repeats a limited number of types (usually the same two male and female models) for stories about attractive people whose job is to do good triumphing over unattractive people whose job is to do evil, which is a derivative and pernicious oversimplification of reality. If you’re judging on originality, complexity, rewarding discussion, and which is least likely to work for Hitler you’ve got to call each match for Hernandez. However, a purely democratic and market-based contest would go to Ross. I have always found the Christian perspective that people suck (or is it just Catholic?) to be one of their most appealing, and am saddened to see Noah undermine it with his squidgy relativism.

Hauerwas isn’t a relativist, I don’t think. He thinks the Christian truth is true, and that a lot of what the rest of the world thinks (like, for example, violence is acceptable) is false. But he believes that adjudicating truth claims on the basis of a reason which claims to speak from nowhere is already ceding the most important epistemological questions to the enemy. Truth claims have no meaning outside of community and faith. That doesn’t meant that truth isn’t truth. It means that secular society is so far wrong that it doesn’t even know how to begin to think about truth or, for that matter, reality.

I’m pretty sure Hauerwas would argue that the binary inability to see any options other than universal truths stated as logical propositions or relativism is a sign of our secular society’s utter intellectual bankruptcy.

“Then what basis do Christians have for criticizing society outside of their community?”

They can criticize it on the basis of their witness, which is rooted in faith and in communal practice. You don’t criticize war-mongers by explaining to them that they have erred in reason. You do it by a practice of non-violence which shapes your life.

Anyway, if you like Christians who are uncompromising, you might try giving Hauerwas a shot. He’s pretty hard-core.

You are undoubtedly right, Mike, but I still call Toth’s and Krigstein’s inclusion in a comics canon “ridiculous.”
—————————

Mmmwell (trying to find some common ground here), can you see how a brilliant actor would — by adding all manner of nuance, complexity, layers of irony — elevate a mediocre script (at least their character’s part, anyway) by an outstanding performance?

(Haven’t read the Puzo novel, but the critical consensus is that Coppola likewise elevated the source material; added gravitas, an epic quality, etc.)

Therefore, even if you couldn’t admire even the better the stories that Toth & Krigstein are most acclaimed for…

I don’t need to concede anything. They were great comics artists. The problem is that the canon doesn’t include artists, but their work. They were “victims” of their social circunstances. Toth couldn’t care less, but Krigstein resented them. He tried to adapt The Badge of Courage, but the times weren’t right for graphic novels.

Alex Ross is okay for what he really does, which is paint alternate covers of superhero comic books. Personally, I think that attempting to photo-realistically paint superheroes is at once a fool’s errand and a pretty valuable exercise in context.

I remember enjoying “Kingdom Come” when I was a kid and I remember enjoying “Marvels” when I was a kid. “Marvels” particularly makes thematic sense because the point-of-view is “man-on-the-street,” “what-would-this-really-look-like” and therefore, Alex Ross’ particular worldview IS the entire story.

It’s a valuable point of view inasmuch as a person is willing to seriously consider the superhero genre as a thing worthy of examination. A person who is predisposed against the entirety of the genre would likely not find anything valuable in the deconstruction of the genre. That almost goes without saying.

I part company with the discussion when the idea goes around that certain works are beneath the need for examination. The claws come out when people attempt to build links between personal maturity and preference in entertainment. I do not like the general tone of criticism in our culture and I outright hate the general tone of criticism in comics subculture. I don’t mean “hate” the way most people use it. I mean like I would pass laws to prevent its socioeconomic advancement.

Here is what I would like to see: people who can talk shit and back it up. People who don’t just make general blanket ad hominem attacks like “babymen” (yes, YOU). I don’t appreciate being grouped in these preposterous categories simply because I don’t like the same funnybooks as you do.

I’m sorry that I can’t be as mature as a Donald Duck reader. Guess I’ll stick my pacifier back in my mouth. Goo goo ga ga.

I just really hate the way the Alex Ross stuff looks. There’s actually a similar problem with superhero costumes in movies, the nippley Batman dark knight outfit maybe most prominently. Superheroes are fantasies; they look idiotic if you try to make them realistic.

The heroic/nobility/real-true-power-and-glory of the Alex Ross stuff also makes me itch. And Marvels struck me as self-glorification for fanboys, right? All about how superheroes are important and relevant — yuck. It’s point-of-purchase advertising as product. Why does anyone want to read that?

Sorry; Ross really gets on my nerves. I’ve been working on a Wonder Woman project and his cover for the essential wonder woman stories is in my face; it makes me bitter.

I like tons of stuff Domingos thinks is not all that (Asterix, Peanuts, Little Nemo, Haney/Aparo Brave and Bold are the things that leap to mind right off — not to mention Twilight.) I understand why hard-core elitism can be annoying — but on the other hand, it’s such a minority position, especially in comics crit, that I find it hard to take much offense. As Domingos would be the first to tell you, he’s lost all the battles and all the wars, and there’s no forseeable chance of him ever winning. Given that, his advocacy for a different view of the comics canon looks like a valuable and threatened resource rather than a real threat to people who like Herge or whatever.

I kind of like Alex Ross. He does flying really well. His characters look like they’re really defying gravity. And his heroes look like the smug, self-assured assholes that they really would be.

Jones,

This:

“the idea of conciliation is, to repeat, that the mere fact of disagreement with a peer provides some evidence against your view.”

Sounds to me like what I said:

“independent of actual problematic arguments (that we take as problematic to our own position), we should still modify our beliefs because of the mere disagreement with peers. That is, even if we think we have good arguments to disprove our peers, we still should be more doubtful of our own position because it is our peers disagreeing.”

I agree we should remain open to being wrong, but I don’t much see why we should do it because some abstracted group of peers doesn’t agree in some ill-defined way. If you think this group has been right about many things in the past, then you’re more likely to think they might be worth listening to about a particular disagreement (that’s not the case with Jeet’s view of Noah). On the the other hand, if the group tends to be wrong in your eyes, then you’re less likely to give any credence to their disagreement (more along the lines of Jeet’s view of Noah). Does that make one resolute? Well, sort of, but that sounds reasonable to me.

And poor Chalmers, he seems to be well known because everyone hates what he says.

It’s not clear Jeet sees me as part of a respected peer group though, I don’t think. As Jones says, HU (and me in particular) has an odd relation to the comics blogosphere.

Though…the reason for that odd relationship is actually almost entirely because of differences of opinion on canonical works, right? Which seems like it complicates Jones’ formulation somewhat, since epistemic peer groups are actually constructed around particular opinions. Therefore, what happens when you disagree isn’t that people say, “yes this person in my peer group disagrees, I should change my opinion”; rather you become definitionally outside the peer group. Which makes sense since the whole point of the peer group is the interest in particular works….

“I think the difficulty here is that you believe that reason is a way to find truth that is not embedded in either communities or practice. Hauerwas doesn’t agree with that; he’d say that you’ve just shifted epistemic communities, rather than that you’ve found an absolute path to truth.”

I don’t have a problem with seeing truth as embedded in a context of some kind, but that doesn’t mean the truth is reducible to that context. A new context can help us discover new truths. And the way you’ve described Hauerwas here is as a relativist.

“And circular reasoning always looks bad on the other guy. But reason and universal abstracted truth claims are used to bolster power as well, and are often reluctant (Hauerwas argues) to acknowledge their relationship to power or to interests.”

I agree with this, too, but an appeal to more circular reasoning isn’t a good way of critiquing oppressive totalizing uses of reason as power.

“But faith isn’t supposed to be reasonable. Hauerwas is arguing that if you believe it, it’s true as a narrative and a life, not as a logical proposition.”

Right, it’s true that it exists as a narrative and a way of living one’s life. But if it has abominable consequences, it’s not through faith that you’re able to change that. You need something like the possibility of critiquing that life and narrative with reason, logic etc.. Otherwise, you just have faith and/or violence.

“The ethics of liberal societies by design are meant to be disconnected. The concentration on decisions and quandaries so characteristic of the ethical theories produced by liberalism is but the other side of issue-politics. Issue-politics and quandary ethics are designed to make it impossible for us to think a relationship might exist between how we conduct our private lives and what we do in our public ones. We are thus taught to become consumers of our own lives, and in the process we are consumed.”

Hauerwas is also, incidentally, mostly concerned with telling Christians how to live, not in explaining how Christian ideas can be utilized to guide national policy (that’s Niebuhr.) That’s not because he’s a relativist, but because he thinks faith is the first step to truth, I think — and because he thinks the Christian witness is about telling you how to live your life, not about telling superpowers why it’s okay for them to bomb people.

On another note…this conversation has helped me see why so many aesthetic differences seem to provoke claims about authority. People do feel that they have to take peer’s opinions seriously, I think, so if there’s an opinion you don’t like, the obvious move is to challenge the authority of the person making the claim.

That sounds right, Noah. If you agree with a group about XYZ, then you’re more willing to listen regarding P, even if you have independently come up with a different evaluation of P. Plantinga, reasonably motivated or not, feels that Christianity has served him well, so he’s more likely to listen to other Christians than Scientologists on some disagreement. I guess this all ties into the research regarding the confirmation bias, that we seek out more info supporting our views than against them. That’s definitely a major problem for open discourse. But I don’t think we should stop trusting certain sources over others. How else could we go about life without drawing lines in the epistemic sand?

Non-violence in Hauerwas’ view (working off of John Howard Yoder) is based on narrative and community; specifically on following the path of Jesus and the traditions of the peace churches. It’s not for Yoder an abstract series of pronouncements, and it’s not effect based either (though it doesn’t eschew effectiveness entirely). Rather, it’s confessional and prophetic.

I think it’s possible that Hauerwas, like Feyerabend, is willing to use the enemies weapons when dueling with the enemy. Beyond that though…Hauerwas isn’t appealing to an abstracted reason, is he? He’s saying people need to live their ethics in their lives, not because that’s what reason leads you to do, but because that’s the morally correct thing to do (based, I presume, on his faith and his understanding of his community.)

Hauerwas also often argues that theologians (and thinkers in the church) have a place, but it’s not the predominant place, or even an especially important place. Reason really should be subordinated to other concerns in his view.

“knowledge really does rest on faith to a not inconsiderable degree, no matter who you are.”

Christians like to lump everything into “faith” to justify their own use of it. I don’t see falsifiability, inference to the best explanation, trust in expert knowledge, etc. to be a matter of religious faith. Does Berkeley’s faith satisfy anyone’s skepticism? Does it help in the least bit?

If Hauerwas is going to show us any value in his faith, he’s going to use some standards of reason to do it. Simply refusing to acknowledge that there’s a reason to calling an act moral doesn’t mean there is no reason.

Darryl: you completely missed the tongue in cheekness of my first post on this thread. Besides, don’t blame me.

Charles: would you still like Alex Ross’ art if you lived in Stalin’s Soviet Union and he produced State propaganda? Propaganda is not that different from popaganda, is it? On the other hand your reading is kind of a détournement which is kinda cool, I guess…

Yeah, too much disagreement and one side or the other will decide you’re outside the aesthetic community. Remember that on “my” view here, aesthetic communities are defined by common tastes, so of course if you disagree a lot you’re not in the community. I don’t think this is a bad thing; what’s happened is that you’ve realised you have different tastes. This is what happened to many of us who grew up reading superhero comics: you reach a certain age where you realise that others in that community have shithouse taste, and you don’t want a part of it.

So how far do you have to disagree before you’re out of the community and can justifiably ignore that community’s views (and, contrariwise, they can ignore yours)? Um…[waves hands, mumbles something unpersuasive] Because community boundaries are vague, so is membership. They’re constantly contended and constantly negotiated.

about whether to take the conciliatory approach to theism. The post’s starting point is the fact, which we talked about in a long thread elsewhere, that professional philosophers of religion are overwhelmingly theists.

Domingos, I like that Soviet propaganda art, too. It just looks so cool. Maybe I’d feel different if it weren’t distant to me, though. There was a good merger of American and Soviet propaganda art in the poster for the Barry Goldwater doc a few years ago. Ross would probably like it.

First of all, Charles, I don’t discuss taste, so, you may like whatever you like as far as I’m concerned.

That said both Soviet propaganda art and Alex Ross’ art are political kitsch: they hide a very ugly reality under a shiny surface. Your détournement reading (calling these heroic figures “assholes”) deflates the mechanism, but this doesn’t mean that it ceased to be very much in place. It doesn’t even mean that it doesn’t work. It just means that it doesn’t work with you…

…both Soviet propaganda art and Alex Ross’ art are political kitsch: they hide a very ugly reality under a shiny surface.
——————————

Heavens; so…

Soviet propaganda glamorizes/justifies/covers up the actual, real-world oppression, terrorizing, and murder of tens of millions of people for a a supposedly “good” cause.

Therefore it’s as deserving of attack as:

Alex Ross’ artwork glamorizes/justifies the fictional, comic-book fantasy of powerful, benevolent heroes in gaudy costumes fighting powerful, sinister baddies in even more flashy outfits to protect us from the latter. The former putting their lives on the line, simply out of the goodness of their hearts; few indeed get paid for their “hero-ing”!

Now, one could make an argument that the whole concept of superheroes predisposes a people to have trust that, similarly — reality being SO easily confused with superhero comic books* — some powerful “heroes” can be trusted to take care of them.

But why not then attack religion, which truly IS taken seriously, even more fiercely?

And, what about Santa Claus? Talk about “hiding a very ugly reality” — encouraging passive dependence upon the largess of a benevolent character who is, in effect, a superhero — “under a shiny surface”…

*Imagine the public reaction by even the most doltish if, say, John McCain would show up at a debate in superhero togs: awe and adulation, or laughter?

I wonder if it worked all that well, Domingos. If you’re suffering under a totalitarian state, do you think some pleasing forms drawn on a poster are going to help you forget that? And I’m hardly one to criticize another for reading too much into pop culture, but I wonder how many people really receive a fascist message from Ross’ artwork. I don’t disagree with you about it, exactly, but sometimes I wonder just how much you have to be of a certain mindset (e.g., you read a lot of theoretical analyses of stuff) to see the problematic messages to begin with. It’s like subliminal messages: if you can’t consciously detect it, they really don’t have an effect on you. I know some people who didn’t see anything fascist or racist or homophobic about the movie 300. They just thought it was bad versus good, without considering who the good and bad were. They’re not people whom I consider bigots, and at least one of them was gay. It didn’t bother him in the least that the villain was a big tall gay man. My friend just didn’t really think of the villain that way. Even if propagandistic art is intended with a ideological purpose, you don’t have to receive it as such. It certainly doesn’t exist in some Wertham-like cause and effect relation with us.

“…but I wonder how many people really receive a fascist message from Ross’ artwork..Even if propagandistic art is intended with a ideological purpose, you don’t have to receive it as such. It certainly doesn’t exist in some Wertham-like cause and effect relation with us.”

Well, that’s sort of interesting. Cultural products with fascist messages do tend to be very very popular. The video game Modern Warfare 2 is one of the all time best sellers with over a billion dollars in sales after 1 year. It also happens to be one of the most fascist games I’ve had the pleasure of encountering. I wonder how much of it seeped through to the young male audience. Has it made them more amenable to military propaganda (as with 300, only more interactive)?

Most reviewers and mainstream commentators complained about the Russian airport massacre scene but that was probably the best part of the game in many ways.

Charles, I totes agree that Ross-as-fascist-propaganda is a bridge too far. It’s enough that it sucks; it doesn’t have to be evil, as well.

But. On the problem of ideological content, I don’t think the concern is that the audience sees e.g. 300 and thinks “You know what, gays and foreigners *are* inherently evil”. Surely the influence is supposed to happen below the level of conscious awareness. E.g. having seen 300, someone might be more likely to have negative feelings when they think about gay people, or foreigners, or McNulty…which doesn’t seem that implausible.

This kind of thing can be even more insidious precisely because the audience doesn’t even realise that it’s been influenced in this way. At least Triumph of the Will is upfront about it.

I’m reading de Certeau right now, so, that’s even farther from Wertham than you are, Charles. I agree with everything said above by all of you. The exception, of course, being Jones doubting my claim that Alex Ross’ art is Fascist popaganda. Look at it again, true believer! ‘Nuff said!

Surely whatever evil Ross may or may not be involved in is severely limited by the fact that he’s working in a medium that is read by statistically nobody…
—————————-

…And that — unlike Communist or Fascist oppression — glorifies characters that are obviously, absurdly, utterly unreal; that not even the most obsessive fanboy would confuse with the actual world.

But then, equating Ross’ harmless (and nicely rendered) artwork with Stalinist propaganda enables Domingos to get on his even higher high-horse (why, its mane is raking the clouds!) in righteous condemnation.

It’s as if assaulting Thomas Kinkade’s kistchy canvases for being a crime against aesthetics were not enough; they must, say, be accused of racism to amp up the holier-than-thou fervor: “Where are all the African-Americans? They’ve been deleted from Kinkade-land by some pogrom! It’s a ‘no coloreds allowed’ world here!!”

—————————-
Charles Reece says:

…It’s like subliminal messages: if you can’t consciously detect it, they really don’t have an effect on you.
—————————-

Um, then wouldn’t that make using subliminal messages — instead of the in-your-face variety — rather self-defeating? The whole point of those (as I see Jones #1 has already noted) is that they’re supposed to affect your attitudes below the level of awareness. (Actual documentation as to its effectiveness is dubious.)

—————————–
…It didn’t bother [this gay guy] in the least that the villain was a big tall gay man. My friend just didn’t really think of the villain that way…
—————————-

Read the book, haven’t seen the movie. My “gaydar” remains functioning nicely, and I saw the villain in the comic as simply being effeminate; a widely-employed shorthand for indicating decadence.

That gay moviegoer likely “got” the difference, even if the average lout would not.

—————————-
fas·cism
1. a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
2. the philosophy, principles, or methods of fascism.
—————————–

Are superheroes running the world with “complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism”? Only in some oddball tangents (i.e., the finale of Moore/Totleben’s Miracleman); the rest are as Mom’s Apple Pie as can be.

Why, the Red Skull was always taunting Captain America as a “democracy-loving fool”…

And as for Alex Ross’ own political views, why he comes across as one ‘a them liberals, judging by this close-to-his-heart project ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Sam_%28Vertigo%29 ), championing of Obama in the pre-disillusionment days before he got elected.

Your characterization of the Soviet Union was as follows: “the […] oppression, terrorizing, and murder of tens of millions of people for a a supposedly “good” cause.”

My characterization of the American Empire: the oppression, terrorizing, and murder of tens of millions of people in the name of Democracy and world policing. Apple pie my gluteous maximus!

If you think that Mao’s or Stalin’s or Mussolini’s propaganda was more real than superhero fantasies I don’t know what to answer to that.

Your determined-looking heroes are staring into the distance because they’re looking for a puppet third world politician who, for a generous fee, gives the Empire free access to energy sources and raw materials while his people strives in unbelievable poverty…

If Ross is a liberal he doesn’t know what he’s doing, it’s that simple.

Equating America with Stalin’s Soviet Union or with Hitler’s Germany is evidence of willful blindness on a heroic scale.

“Fascist” is a description that should be used warily.
First, because it is one of the most serious accusations that can be made against an artist.
Second, because careless use of the term devaluates it and de-fangs it.
If everyone we don’t like is a fascist, we’ll end up unable to recognise REAL Fascism when it arrives.

I wouldn’t deny the power of marketing, but how does it work? Hippies and counter-culture types were associated with the VW bug, because it got sold to them in a fairly conscious manner. They recognized themselves in the ad campaign as someone who is on the outs with mainstream society, who doesn’t want a flashy car, who’s willing to see aesthetic value where the majority doesn’t. I forget the name of the guy who came up with that campaign, but he was a reader of Marcuse. He used Frankfurt ideas of mass society to sell to those predisposed to those ideas. And it worked. My point is that the target consumer was “manipulated” based on his pre-existing concepts.

Similarly, if effeminate men tend to be associated with betrayal, decadence, perversion and evil, then it’s not too hard to see how all of that gets associated with the stereotypes of gay men. But, for that to happen in an audience, there has to be some recognition of what’s being associated with the negative features. If a recipient doesn’t possess certain concepts and associations between concepts in place, he’s less likely to influenced by the current association being made. While this recognition or whatnot isn’t all conscious, it’s not the Freudian unconscious either. 300’s villain is a hyperbolical version of classic Hollywood anti-gay stereotypes, but if an audience isn’t aware of that tradition, it’s quite possible (probable, I think) that the villain comes across as particular to the story, not as a generalizable ideological message. Likewise, how many in the audience were having associations between Arabs, Chinese and Africans to evil and barbarity strengthened if they didn’t recognize the villainous invading hordes as representing those groups? The depictions were so racially ridiculous (the Chinese types had masks that once removed revealed demons) that the associations might be easily missed altogether. Granted, it’s hard to not notice (even pre-consciously) that white is good, other is bad, but there were plenty of nefarious white people to mess with that simple association — they tended to be bureaucratic democrats. Thus, the message many, if not most, people were left with is that sometimes you have to fight for your freedom and macho is good.

Domingos,

Like Big Brother ads, the Soviet posters were probably more effective as reminders to the populace that it better behave as if the message is being believed. I wouldn’t make the same claim about superhero comics or the art of Alex Ross. The implicit command to hide one’s true feelings isn’t really being enforced, is it? We can discuss how those images are fascistic lies, or belie fascism, without worrying about reprisal. Thus, they have to convince (in some fashion) the recipient of the fascist message, since they don’t carry the implicit command. And since people such as Suat and myself can enjoy fascistic entertainment while openly acknowledging the fascism, I’m not so sure that being propaganda disqualifies art from being evaluated as art. Intentional propaganda can function as art, too (not that you have to call video games or superhero comics good art, but I trust you get my point). One of my favorite examples of undeniably great art that was also intended as propaganda is ?György Ligeti?’s
“Musica Ricerata 2” (used most famously in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut). As Ligeti himself described it, each piano stroke was intended as a spike in the heart of communism. But there’s nothing necessary about that connection; a hypothetical communist piano player could be staking the freedom fighters with his performance, if his audience isn’t aware of the composer’s intention (cf., Reagan’s attempted use of “Born in the USA”).

Your characterization of the Soviet Union was as follows: “the […] oppression, terrorizing, and murder of tens of millions of people for a a supposedly “good” cause.”

My characterization of the American Empire: the oppression, terrorizing, and murder of tens of millions of people in the name of Democracy and world policing. Apple pie my gluteous maximus!

If you think that Mao’s or Stalin’s or Mussolini’s propaganda was more real than superhero fantasies I don’t know what to answer to that.

Your determined-looking heroes are staring into the distance because they’re looking for a puppet third world politician who, for a generous fee, gives the Empire free access to energy sources and raw materials while his people strives in unbelievable poverty…
————————————

I certainly despise the iniquities and murderous hypocrisy of the American Empire, of which your description is certainly on-target. I’m quite an admirer of Noam Chomsky, whose criticisms — to put it mildly — of Imperial Americana are massively well-documented. Also have a set of the brilliant “Friendly Dictators Trading Cards” ( http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/AlphaD.html ), where Portugal’s Salazar makes an appearance.

However, for all that Superman (on the TV show) was said to be for “Truth, Freedom, and the American Way!”, superheroes are, rather than “looking for a puppet third world politician who, for a generous fee, gives the Empire free access to energy sources and raw materials while his people strives in unbelievable poverty” (that’s the job of American politicians) more into (stop the presses!) thwarting Two-Face from stealing a sculpture of Janus, Galactus from eating the world, the Ringmaster from picking the pockets of hapless, hypnotized circus audiences, and other petty/absurd naughtiness which hardly is a threat to America’s international hegemony.

————————————
AB says:

…careless use of the term devaluates it and de-fangs it.
If everyone we don’t like is a fascist, we’ll end up unable to recognise REAL Fascism when it arrives.
————————————–

Slinging such hot-button terms around devalues the “currency,” but also inflates the importance of the accusation (and thus, the accuser); emphasizes the accuser’s exalted “More anti-______ than thou” position; serves to crush those who, God forbid, might not be as extreme. (I.e., people in the Russian regime criticizing Stalin weren’t accused of being moderate Communists, they were enemies of Communism, traitorous tools of the capitalists!)

—————————————-
Domingos Isabelinho says:

Oh I recognize [fascism], don’t you worry. FYI I lived the first years of my life in a Fascist state.
—————————————–

Until he was overthrown by Castro, a U.S.S.R.-supported left-wing tyrant. Under whose regime I lived another number of years.

I’d find fascism the “lesser evil” to live under; at least (unless they think you’re plotting against them, or a member of a targeted minority group) they’ll not seize the family home or small business for “the people”…

——————————————
Charles Reece says:

… if effeminate men tend to be associated with betrayal, decadence, perversion and evil, then it’s not too hard to see how all of that gets associated with the stereotypes of gay men. But, for that to happen in an audience, there has to be some recognition of what’s being associated with the negative features…Likewise, how many in the audience were having associations between Arabs, Chinese and Africans to evil and barbarity strengthened if they didn’t recognize the villainous invading hordes as representing those groups?
——————————————-

I agree with all that; I was just saying that at least the “non-intellectually-challenged” members of the audience could tell that a character’s being effeminate did not exactly translate to their being gay. I’ve known many gay guys (and lesbians!) who were ‘way more “butch” than moi…

…Your determined-looking heroes are staring into the distance because they’re looking for a puppet third world politician who, for a generous fee, gives the Empire free access to energy sources and raw materials while his people strives in unbelievable poverty…

If Ross is a liberal he doesn’t know what he’s doing, it’s that simple.
—————————–

No; as a commercially-minded artist, he knows perfectly well what he’s doing. Lifting effective design approaches and techniques (the source, and whatever moral taint it might contain being irrelevant ) for his own use. Which is par for the course in the field of commercial design, illustration, and other places.

When Brian De Palma copied Eisenstein’s “Odessa Steps sequence” for his movie of The Untouchables, was he perpetrating Communist propaganda, as Battleship Potemkin (where that famous scene appeared)was?

In Ross’ defense, even his superhero artwork can elsewhere show more interesting qualities than the “rock-jawed heroes, seen from a low angle to emphasize their grandeur, looking off in the distance” approaches that propaganda delights in. He’s painted scenes of massed superheroes/villains clashing that show a swirling, almost baroque complexity…

Formal structures do have their own meanings too, though. Star Wars, with its loads of anonymous storm troopers being slaughtered without a shred of human dignity or sympathy and its relentless glorification of warfare — not to mention its occasional bizarre detours into racism — is not as far removed from its sources as Lucas would probably like it to be ideologically.

I don’t know Lucas’s motives, but with De Palma, that scene in The Untouchables was a last-minute decision. He had originally planned an elaborate chase through the trains in the Chicago station à la similar scenes in Carlito’s Way and Dressed to Kill. However, when the time came to shoot it, the production executives pulled the plug for budgetary reasons. The idea for the Odessa Steps homage came about when De Palma, trying to figure out how to create a showpiece action climax on the cheap and on the fly, saw the stairwell in the train station. He figured the runaway baby carriage would create an effective suspense counterpoint to the gunfight, and it would be an amusing Easter egg for the more erudite members of the audience.

It’s a lot more worthy of respect than the echoes of Riefenstahl in Star Wars. De Palma is much more sophisticated than Lucas even when he’s rushed. Morally, De Palma makes the same point Eisenstein did: no matter how righteous the conflict, violence still imperils the innocent; it’s a horrible thing. Lucas seems very superficial to me; my guess is he’s just trying to recreate how cool something looks.

De Palma never took The Untouchables very seriously, by the way. At the time, he was quoted as telling his crew, “This is a Western. Good guys. Bad guys. We’re not doing a big thing here.” He considers it one of life’s little jokes that it’s his most critically successful film. He was certainly never invested in it to the degree Lucas is with Star Wars or Ross is with his superhero art.

“De Palma is much more sophisticated than Lucas even when he’s rushed”

I don’t even like De Palma, but this was so understated it made me laugh. Is there anybody who thinks Lucas is anything but a fool? I like the first couple star wars films (kudos to Jim Henson) but if there’s any thought in those things, it’s not the director’s fault.

Formal structures do have their own meanings too, though. Star Wars, with its loads of anonymous storm troopers being slaughtered without a shred of human dignity or sympathy and its relentless glorification of warfare — not to mention its occasional bizarre detours into racism — is not as far removed from its sources as Lucas would probably like it to be ideologically.
———————————

Alas, aren’t cinematic depictions of “loads of anonymous [enemies] being slaughtered without a shred of human dignity or sympathy and [a] relentless glorification of warfare” par for the course, whatever the country or era? Humanistic depictions of the pain suffered by the “other side,” that the “enemy” is human too, that war is routinely an ugly, brutal thing are few and far between.

At least Lucas decided in his later films to have the “bad guys” predominantly using robots as fighters, to get away from the “anonymous storm troopers being slaughtered” bit. (The clones were fighters too, but they more shown doing the killing, rather than being shot down by the sympathetic characters.)

Going back to the Hauerwas and reason question, I just ran across this discussion between Alan Sokal and Michael Lynch.

ML: According to many people, what the problem of justifying first principles really shows is that because reasons always run out or end up just going in circles, our starting point must always be something more like faith.

There is a grain of truth in this disquieting thought. We can’t reasonably defend our trust in science just by doing more science in the hope of persuading those who aren’t already on board. But that doesn’t mean we can’t give reasons for our first principles, including the epistemic principles of science. Of course we can. The hard question is what sort of reasons we can give.

AS: The point is, simply, that fundamentalist Christians’ epistemic principles are not, at bottom, so different from ours. They accept as evidence the same types of sense experience that the rest of us do; and in most circumstances they are attentive, just like the rest of us, to potential errors in the interpretation of sense experience.

The trouble is not that fundamentalist Christians reject our core epistemic principles; on the contrary, they accept them. The trouble is that they supplement the ordinary epistemic principles that we all adopt in everyday life — the ones that we would use, for instance, when serving on jury duty — with additional principles like “This particular book always tells the infallible truth.”

Sorry. If Sokal was any more pompous his ego would pop a little mini-ego out of its mouth like the critters in Aliens.

The difference between people who are willing to own to the place of faith in their epistemology and those who insist that there are reasonable turtles all the way down is just that; a willingness to own to the limits of one’s own hunk of grey matter. There’s nothing disquieting about realizing that you can’t know everything. There is something disquieting in the realization that some people find this disquieting — that apparently “reasonable” people believe that they are somehow diminished if they can’t snap a grid over the entirety of existence.

I didn’t say the Bible was necessary to believe it. I do think that epistemology and morality are a lot more closely related than (often but not always non-religious) people like to give them credit for. Turning epistemic questions into issues of technology is a very definite moral stance, howsoever that morality may be denied.

1, it’s a moral stance because it’s the baseline for a whole range of moral positions. Basically, if you think you can know the best way for the world to go, even provisionally, that’s a huge moral argument for action. If you think you can’t necessarily know that, the moral argument for action is much, much weaker.

This is one of the central issues in John Howard Yoder’s Politics of Jesus, which I just finished. The basic moral question of pacifism looks very different depending on your epistemology. And Yoder argues, I think, that the stance towards epistemology is itself moral; that relegating to yourself the power to decide what is best for the world is, for Christians, a violation of their religion.

As for 2…well, good for him. I didn’t go back and read the whole link. The little bit you showed me got me cranky enough!

Yoder is not a subjectivist. He’s not saying you can’t believe things are absolutely true, or that there is objective truth. On the contrary, he thinks that there is objective truth. But one objective truth he believes in is that human beings can’t know enough to plot the future course of history. As a result, killing people in order to bring about a happy outcome for history is evil, whether you are fighting Nazis or building a dam or whatever.

Or maybe think of it this way. The epistemological issue here is not subjective/objective; not “is truth for you the same as truth for me.” Yoder thinks the Christian revelation is true for everyone, and he’s not questioning facts on the ground; he’s not saying, “Saddam Hussein may not have killed tons of Kurds, therefore we cannot act against him.”

Rather, he’s saying, people can’t predict the future. (this is an objective fact.) Given that people can’t predict the future, nobody has the right to act as if other people are grist for their plots. It’s not that some facts are solid and others are relative and squishy. It’s that human beings do not have access to certain kinds of knowledge (about the future, or about cause and effect in history), and those limitations on knowledge have practical moral implications.

In contrast, Reinhold Niebuhr thinks that statesmen have to act pragmatically based on limited information. He sees this as tragic but necessary, and feels that those who refuse to act out of moral squeamishness are simply choosing tyranny in favor of anarchy. But even there, of course, Niebuhr’s assuming you can make pragmatic predictions about the future based on the information you have (that is, you can meaningfully choose tyranny over anarchy because you can figure out which path leads where.)

What I meant was that there’s not a necessary connection between the grounding of morality and epistemology. One could be a realist about scientific fact, but not morality, for example. I’m not sure who thinks we can predict the future, so that’s a bit of an outlying position, isn’t it? There are Christian determinists out there. The religious belief doesn’t somehow naturally lend itself to a more open view of the world (particularly if one believes in an omnipotent and omniscience god). What I’m saying is that religion just adds more stuff to positions that are possible without it (many think like that position of Niebuhr without needing the Christianity). This is why I was agreeing with Sokal.

Hey Charles. Whether one could or could not reach these positions without Christianity (Yoder couldn’t, I don’t think), the fact remains that a lot of the most profound thinking about pacifism and violence in our culture comes out of Christian traditions and debates. That includes Just War thinking, Niebuhr’s pragmatism, and pacifism, which is rooted in the Peace churches — not to mention MLK’s nonviolent resistance. Trying to wave that away as unnecessary seems pretty blinkered to me. Intellectual traditions are traditions; pretending they can be abstracted away from the context that created them is just a way of pretending your view form somewhere is a view form nowhere; it’s meant to prevent you from having to acknowledge your own position, it seems to me.

If only the belief in the ability to predict the future were an outlying position. Alas, our entire government is built on the belief that wonkish economists and experts can tell us what’s going to happen when we implement policy x, is it not? The idea that the world is knowable and manipulable is the impervious superstition of the pragmatic government functionary. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

Well, those economists and experts think they’re right, but you don’t. Are you more open to their being right than they are of your opinion? It doesn’t sound like it. Is pacifism the correct way to go, or is it not, or is only sometimes the best course of action? Likewise, I don’t much see Christianity as lending itself to being more receptive to being wrong. That contradicts most of its history, in fact. You might argue that much of its history was filled with frauds, but then you’re not being very open are you? Of course, Christians can be right about whatever social issue that comes along, and they can be wrong. Just like everyone else. There is as much variety in Christian thought as there is any other intellectual tradition, which kind of proves my point. I don’t believe that Christianity was unimportant to those who used it to get to some position, I just don’t agree that it’s necessary to get to any position outside of whatever dogma that defines being Christian.

No; I don’t know whether they’re right or wrong, is the point. It’s the certainty, and the belief that one should drop bombs on people based on that certainty that’s the issue.

Again, I feel like we’re talking at cross purposes. The point isn’t whether Christians are right or wrong. Yoder’s talking about a particular attitude towards human knowledge and a particular willingness to accept an inability to control the world. He gets there from a Christian tradition. Saying he didn’t need the Christian tradition to get there, therefore, seems silly.

“There is as much variety in Christian thought as there is any other intellectual tradition”

But there’s a great deal more variety, and a great deal more depth of thought, about certain issues. Without the Christian tradition, the West has a very, very limited intellectual tradition devoted to war and peace. It’s like saying that you don’t necessarily need the scientific tradition to deal with physics. Maybe it’s true in some sense, but it’s kind of nonsense when the issue in question has been traditionally defined through the tradition you’re claiming you can exclude.

Whether or not something is abstractly “necessary” doesn’t have a lot to do with how history and tradition work.

So you’re not certain that we shouldn’t drop bombs? It sounds like you are.

And, again, I’m not claiming Yoder didn’t need Christianity. Maybe he did. Others don’t, though. While I don’t know enough about the history of war theory, I’m skeptical that most of it is necessarily based on a Christian perspective. Hobbes and Machiavelli don’t fit that description. And, certainly, all the great moral philosophies aren’t necessarily determined by a belief in Christianity. People had to deal with Christianity because it was being violently and widely enforced. We’ve largely gotten past that point, which is a good thing.

Theories of nonviolence in the west are overwhelmingly a theological preoccupation. It’s true that pragmatic theories of how you should kill whoever you want are more evenly distributed between secular and Christian sources, for what that’s worth.

And, again, you’re obsessed with certainty and objective truth here, even though those are really tangential issues at best. The point isn’t that Yoder doesn’t believe what he believes. He absolutely does — but the epistemological basis of that belief is explicitly tied to faith, not to his own ability to predict the future. Which is a very large difference with serious moral implications.

And if you don’t think that people have to deal with pragmatic rational economic theory because it is violently and widely enforced…well, you’re not living in the world I’m familiar with, I guess. Ask lots of nations how they feel about the World Bank.

Faith in being absolutely right is what you seem to be arguing against. I agree with you there. I just don’t agree that absolute faith in a totalizing divine subjectivity is the best way to encourage a healthy skepticism.

This is pretty funny actually; I’m less frustrated than amazed. I really don’t see theology as especially alien or alienating, but it’s clear that it is. I don’t think I’m being especially unclear, but you seem to be actually incapable of understanding what I’m saying.

I’ll try once more, and then I’ll give up.

You’re insisting that the issue here is skepticism about one’s own knowledge. I really don’t think that’s the issue. The question is epistemological, but it’s specifically about the relationship between epistemology and action.

Maybe this will help. Reinhold Niebuhr is a very, very skeptical, rational theologian. He feels strongly that human beings have limited knowledge. However, for him, this skepticism ends up simply being a reason for pragmatic politicians to make their best guess at issues of war and peace, albeit filled with tragic knowledge. Humans can’t know anything *for certain*, but they still have an obligation to take their *best guess* and act in the world so as to push society/civilization/humanity on and on towards the best and the brightest future.

Yoder, on the other hand, argues that we cannot know how to act in the world so as to push the world towards the best and the brightest future. He agrees with Niebuhr (and surely with just about everybody, as you’ve suggested) that we cannot know for certain how to effect the world. But instead of arguing that we should take our best guess, he argues that we need to relinquish those kinds of coercive, violent choices to god.

Is that clearer? The question of skepticism and objective and relative truth are really neither here nor there; nobody’s really disagreeing about those questions in a substantive way. The question is how morality and epistemology are tied together when contemplating issues of war and peace — questions which have been debated most seriously in the West in a Christian context — to such an extent that someone who rejects the Christian context, such as yourself, seems to have real, serious difficulties in understanding the terms of the debate.
____
As far as whether Yoder is better off now…again, this seems like a question that’s almost completely beside the point. Hauerwas and Yoder really have no love of Constantianism — they don’t think that the Church should control the world, and their commitment to that perspective is, I suspect, at least as thoroughgoing as your secular rationale. Indeed, the violently anti-establishment Protestantism that they’re (in part) coming from is where the secular freedom-of-conscience argument started in the first place. But be that as it may, conscientious objectors are generally ignored in peace and have a hard time of it in war, and that’s no different now than it ever was. The major difference for us is not secularization per se, but the institution of a volunteer army, which means that we can have our empire without worrying about the draft.

To me, it’s not that I’m misunderstanding you, but that I disagree with about whether Christianity has anything to offer as Christianity. I don’t think it does, but you do. But we’ll just agree to disagree or remain too confused about what each other is saying to continue. It was fun, nevertheless.

It was fun! I’m sure we’ll do it again…I was just actually writing a chapter about this stuff for a book project, so it’s been useful to talk about it.

Eric, of course you’re right; there have been non-Christian contributions to war/non-violence discussions even in the west. Christian ones have been really important, though, and I think have tended to shape the broad outlines of the debate. Niebuhr, just war theory, and the pacifist churches have all been really important.

Noah and Charles, a few things: first, scepticism about our predictive capacities is compatible with theological dogmatism. For instance, one might think that we have a priori reason to believe that gods exist, but that a posteriori knowledge of the world is so radically fallible as to be basically useless. Of course, that doesn’t seem to be the view of anyone Noah is citing (who, I assume, would strongly disavow the idea that one needs “reasons” to believe in gods), but it’s still a tenable position in conceptual space.

Second, and this is directed mostly at Noah, from the fact that our knowledge of the future is limited, nothing follows for how we should decide to act. Literally nothing. I really, really want to all-caps that sentence, but I’m holding back.

To get some import for action, you need some extra premises. One might be: (1) You should only act if you’re 100% certain that the outcome will be good. But (1) is plainly ridiculous, so it can’t be what Noah has in mind. How about this, then? (2) You should only inflict harm if you’re 100% certain that the outcome will be good overall. But, again, this doesn’t seem right, or else e.g. huge swathes of medical practice would be unethical–“how do I know that this heart surgery won’t magically cause a million children to be tortured? Like, it would be totes arrogant to assume that it’s not going to–that’s sooo post-enlightenment”. And, many, many other things would be unethical, too. Further examples are left for the reader to invent.

But maybe there’s some other premise that restricts the kinds of harms for which something like (2) holds? Something like this: (3) For some kinds of harms, you should inflict them only if you’re 100% certain that the outcome will be good overall. I don’t think that such a premise is true, but it’s not obviously ridiculous and, incidentally, it’s compatible with certain kinds of utilitarianism. (I know that last will make you feel totally vindicated, Noah!) The issue would then be twofold, first to define what kinds of harms are the never-ever-ever kind and, second, to justify the premise.

Alternatively, you could just go Kantian, which Noah pretty much avows in various places above. Kant’s ethical theory in one sentence: treat people only as ends-in-themselves, never merely as a means to another end. But then all that stuff about the uncertainty of our knowledge is neither here nor there — even if we did have 100% certainly, we still shouldn’t bomb the hell out of people.

Mike. “Humanistic depictions of the pain suffered by the “other side,” that the “enemy” is human too, that war is routinely an ugly, brutal thing are few and far between.”

Great art is few and far between.
——————————

True; though such a more-morally-complex viewpoint need not even be limited to great art, but simply Art.

Though how it badly would get in the way of an audience’s enjoyment if on a James Bond movie, upon the assault on the villain’s lair, the camera would focus upon the dying agonies of one of the nameless henchmen, the fear in his eyes, whispered words of love for a distant wife. Why, even the easy satisfactions of a WW II movie would be lessened if the “bad guys” were to be granted their full humanity.

Speaking of the Odessa Steps Sequence, Eisenstein certainly lied freely in his propaganda films like October. (After showing our high-school class a thrilling scene of the violent storming of the Tsar’s Winter Palace in that movie, staccato editing echoing the rattle of blazing machine-guns), the teacher then informed us it was actually taken without firing a shot. I was certain the vast majority of those attending would later “remember” it had been captured after a massive gun-battle.)

In Battleship Potemkin, the sailors in mutiny against the Tsar — whom we’re meant to root for — in reality actually threatened to shell a nearby town. Horrified, the authorities gave in to their demands.

——————————-
Noah Berlatsky says:

…If only the belief in the ability to predict the future were an outlying position. Alas, our entire government is built on the belief that wonkish economists and experts can tell us what’s going to happen when we implement policy x, is it not? The idea that the world is knowable and manipulable is the impervious superstition of the pragmatic government functionary. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
——————————-

It moves into folly if one thinks that the world is absolutely knowable and manipulable. I’m with Niebuhr, as you summarized: “statesmen have to act pragmatically based on limited information.” Indeed, isn’t that what all of us do every day? Whether on small decisions or life-changing ones?

And, how much more dangerous is the attitude of those who utterly dismiss (rather than being careful, skeptical about) “wonkish economists and experts”: that all you need is faith (signs in front of the Faith Radio station near our home announce, “Prayer: America’s Only Hope”), or that physical reality, a worldwide scientific consensus, are mere trivialities to be easily altered.

How much more dangerous to dismiss the arguments — backed by a massively sweeping scientific consensus — that we should actually do something about climate change and the unimaginably devastating consequences it will have, as “impervious superstition,” deserving no more respect than a holy-roller’s assertion that “if you commit self-abuse, you’re going to Hell!”

——————————-
…In the fall of 2004, the phrase “proud member of the reality-based community” was first used to suggest the commentator’s opinions are based more on observation than on faith, assumption, or ideology. The term has been defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality.” Some commentators have gone as far as to suggest that there is an overarching conflict in society between the reality-based community and the “faith-based community” as a whole…

The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, The New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove):

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
——————————http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

—————————–
Noah Berlatsky says:

…again, you’re obsessed with certainty and objective truth here, even though those are really tangential issues at best…
—————————–

Um, I hope you mean “tangential” to this discussion, rather than for dealing with the actual world. Whereupon stepping into the path of an onrushing 16-wheeler would have the “certainty and objective truth” of severe injuries, at the very least, resulting.

“Why shouldn’t I put strychnine in the baby-bottle? ‘Objective truth’ is just a canard…”

—————————–
[addressing Charles] …I’m less frustrated than amazed. I really don’t see theology as especially alien or alienating…
—————————-

I don’t see it as “alien”; the impulse to find supernatural explanations for otherwise incomprehensible natural phenomena is surely omnipresent in primitive societies. Then is carries into the present by also providing a “coping mechanism” for dealing with life’s turmoil.

When it becomes alienating is when it becomes central to one’s existence; when dogma overcomes observed reality, where those who are not Believers are seen as damned, evil…

—————————–
…I don’t think I’m being especially unclear, but you seem to be actually incapable of understanding what I’m saying.
—————————–

How well I know the feeling!

—————————–
Yoder…argues that we cannot know how to act in the world so as to push the world towards the best and the brightest future. He agrees with Niebuhr (and surely with just about everybody, as you’ve suggested) that we cannot know for certain how to effect the world. But instead of arguing that we should take our best guess, he argues that we need to relinquish those kinds of coercive, violent choices to god.
—————————–

So we should wait for God to raise the minimum wage, abolish slavery, stop a factory from belching poisons into a community’s drinking water, halt the Axis in its campaign of conquest and genocide?

——————————-
Early in his life, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had been reading the Bible to keep a promise he had made to a friend. He found the Old Testament extremely difficult going..But the New Testament produced a different impression, especially the Sermon on the Mount which went straight to his heart. The verses about not resisting evil but offering the other cheek and giving the cloak to one who asked for one’s coat delighted him beyond measure. They reminded him about something he had learned in his childhood about returning with gladness good for evil done.

“I did once seriously think of embracing the Christian faith,” Gandhi told Millie Polak, the wife of one of his earliest disciples. “The gentle figure of Christ, so patient, so kind, so loving, so full of forgiveness that he taught his followers not to retailate when abused or struck, but to turn the other cheek, I thought it was a beautiful example of the perfect man…”

…Poverty, suffering, the Crosss, non-violence, morality – all these were part of the Kingdom of God. But for Gandhi what struck him most in the Sermon on the Mount was Christ’s teaching on non-retaliation, or non-resistance to evil. “Of all the things I have read what remained with me forever was that Jesus came almost to give a new law – not an eye for an eye but to receive two blows when only one was given, and to go two miles when they were asked to go one. I came to see that the Sermon on the Mount was the whole of Christianity for him who wanted to live a Christian life. It is that sermon that has endeared Jesus to me.”

“Jesus occupies in my heart,” said Gandhi, “the place of one of the greatest teachers who have had a considerable influence on my life. I shall say to the Hindus that your life will be incomplete unless you reverentially study the teachings of Jesus… Make this world the kingdom of God and his righteousness and everything will be added unto you. I tell you that if you will understand, appreciate, and act up to the spirit of this passage, you won’t need to know what place Jesus or any other teacher occupies in your heart.”
—————————–http://robtshepherd.tripod.com/gandhi.html

…If only the belief in the ability to predict the future were an outlying position. Alas, our entire government is built on the belief that wonkish economists and experts can tell us what’s going to happen when we implement policy x, is it not? The idea that the world is knowable and manipulable is the impervious superstition of the pragmatic government functionary. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
——————————-

BTW, in the chapter devoted to Vietnam in Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly, it was mentioned there were plenty of “wonkish experts” who argued against the U.S. getting involved; but they were overruled by emotional thinking; “faith-based” not in the “based upon religion” fashion, but in the ideologue’s “my beliefs are more important and substantial grounds than mere reality.”

Hey Jones. Well, this is where Yoder brings in the life of Jesus as a model, and why being a Christian is important to how his ethics work. That is, you don’t need epistemlogocial theories to tell you how to act, because Jesus tells you how to act. Believing you can make the world go the way you want is wrong because Jesus says don’t do that, and on the contrary was willing to be nailed to the cross rather than doing that himself.

Mike: “So we should wait for God to raise the minimum wage, abolish slavery, stop a factory from belching poisons into a community’s drinking water, halt the Axis in its campaign of conquest and genocide?”

Yoder’s not against public action — he’d hardly be writing a book if that were the case. (Jesus wasn’t either, or again, wouldn’t have public statements.) But physical coercion, including killing, is something he doesn’t think people should be doing to each other.

Mike: “So we should wait for God to raise the minimum wage, abolish slavery, stop a factory from belching poisons into a community’s drinking water, halt the Axis in its campaign of conquest and genocide?”

Noah: “Yoder’s not against public action — he’d hardly be writing a book if that were the case. (Jesus wasn’t either, or again, wouldn’t have public statements.) But physical coercion, including killing, is something he doesn’t think people should be doing to each other.”

The cessation of slave taking in Africa was accomplished via the guns of the Royal Navy. The deaths of those Arab, African and European slavers was the lesser evil that allowed for the greater good, no?

And, of course, whilst the arguments and moral impulses that influenced the political power guiding said guns was often religiously motivated, so too were those that endorsed slavery and stood against its abolition.

An infallible guidebook to human existence that can be – and regularly is – used to simultaneously champion mutually incompatible and entirely contradictory positions is functionally useless. If its adherents have, on occasion, done some good in the world, they’ve done so in spite of it rather than because of it.

Well, as usual, there’s a lot to say in response to this kind of thing:

“you don’t need epistemlogocial theories [I take it you mean something like “beliefs about the consequences of action”] to tell you how to act, because Jesus tells you how to act”

Mike’s gag about strychnine is very pertinent here, and there’s a whole other can of worms. Actually, there’s an even bigger can which is itself filled with cans of worms. But I won’t open them, since we’d just be going in circles. Again.

Instead, a question about *your* position, not Yoder’s, viz. what lesson are we secular degenerates meant to take from your discussions of theology? Here’s how the conversation seems, from this end, to go:

Noah: Repent the worldly ways of your arrogant utilitarianism! [Or scientism, enlightenment philosophy, whatever is the issue at hand] It leads to genocide, war, cats and dogs living together, and so forth. Follow the example of Theologian X!

Charles/me/Mike/Ian/et al: But Theologian X’s view seems to face similar problems to “our” view, as well as having a whole other bunch of problems.

Noah [waving hand]: A bagatelle. Theologian X has faith in the gods, and faith doesn’t need to be rational.

Charles/et al.: But we don’t believe in the gods, so what should *we* do?

Noah: Repent your worldly utilitarianism! It leads to genocide, war, cats and dogs living together, and so forth. Follow the example of Theologian X!

…repeat ad what feels like infinitum. It ends up seeming like you’re trying to talk out of both sides of your mouth. On the one hand, it seems we’re supposed to adapt our own behaviour in light of Theologian X’s theory, which sounds like you’re endorsing that theory. But on the other hand, when presented with problems for the theory, you usually resort to stating, without endorsing, X’s reliance on faith, an example which the rest of us can’t follow. It’s swell that Yoder thinks we should do the WWJD thing, but what are the rest of us supposed to do? [Read all this as good-humoured, but fundamentally sincere]

I don’t think that’s exactly how it goes necessarily. I would say that looking to stories and narrative rather than to abstract chains of reasoning for moral guidance seems like pretty much how people actually deal with moral issues, whether they’re Christians or analytic philosophers.

Oh…and Ian, the cessation of slave taking by the British was a mostly peaceful result of activism, pushed through by Christians (definitely) and I believe by non-Christians as well.

The difficulty with both your and Jones’ position is the assumption that there is some moral system that is infallible, or that works better than Christianity or traditional systems. I don’t really see it. Rational moral systems don’t really go back to first principles as far as I can tell; they mostly seem parasitic on traditional moralities. That is, they work off of the same principles (do unto others, don’t kill each other) while more or less consciously chucking the basis for those principles (i.e., God says so — or “this is the way we have done things”, or “here are some stories about how people should treat each other.”)

I don’t think there is a very good answer to the question of how we should treat each other in the absence of God. However, the fact that there’s not a good answer doesn’t mean that there’s a good answer, if you see what I mean. Sneering at theologians because without god they don’t have a good answer seems like mostly a way to ignore the fact that secularists haven’t really come up with answers that make sense either, even by their own standards.

I readily admit my own position is pretty untenable. I haven’t seen anyone else’s that is particularly tenable, though, is the problem. Christians believe in God, which I don’t. Secularists believe in the power of their own reason, which I don’t find convincing either. I end up arguing against secularists more than against Christians in no small part because secularists are what I have to argue with here for the most part, though….

“the cessation of slave taking by the British was a mostly peaceful result of activism”

No – the legal abolition of slavery within the British Empire was a result of activism but the enforcement of that abolition outside direct British jurisdiction was absolutely down to military force and the threat thereof. From the Zanzibari slave trails of East Africa to the slave forts of the Ivory Coast and the transatlantic trade routes, morality issued forth from the barrel of a gun.

“Rational moral systems don’t really go back to first principles as far as I can tell; they mostly seem parasitic on traditional moralities. That is, they work off of the same principles (do unto others, don’t kill each other) while more or less consciously chucking the basis for those principles (i.e., God says so — or “this is the way we have done things”, or “here are some stories about how people should treat each other.”)”

Christianity is also “parasitic” on earlier belief systems (as Francesca Stavrakopoulou and other scholars have pointed out, religions aren’t born fully formed – they evolve from the belief systems that precede and surround them) and it seems decidedly likely that the crux of human morality is, essentially, a by-product of communal living – all intelligent social animals that live in large social groups abide by codes of conduct for their mutual benefit. We’ve coated our moral codes in religious wrapping paper in the past, which had some advantages but also meant that those codes got mixed up in and obscured by all the other things covered by the same paper – unwrapping religions to see what good stuff is tucked in the bottom of the parcel is fine but we can throw the box in the recycling; it’s superfluous.
Anyway, if you believe that a moral code with foundations of faith is somehow better than one without, you still have yet to explain why Christianity is a better moral basis than any other religion. Let’s face it: pantheons are always more entertaining.

“I don’t think there is a very good answer to the question of how we should treat each other in the absence of God.”

I don’t get this. When was the last time you beat somebody to death with a rock because you wanted to steal their sandwich? The absence of God in your life hasn’t made you into a deranged sociopath (that I’m aware of) – your sense of morality may have been influenced by the Judeo-Christian values of your culture but your lack of belief in any divine punishment awaiting transgressors of those values hasn’t made you more likely to step outside their bounds. Indeed, statistically speaking, atheists are significantly less likely to commit crimes than religious people. We can obviously put that down, in large part, to the obvious underlying socio-economic factors but said factors would presumably be balanced out at least somewhat by lack of faith if we really needed a deity to underpin basic human decency.

“Sneering at theologians because without god they don’t have a good answer seems like mostly a way to ignore the fact that secularists haven’t really come up with answers that make sense either, even by their own standards.”

Even if you could conclusively demonstrate that a belief in dragons or mermaids or whatever would be more likely to make one a fundamentally decent chap than not believing in such colourful beasties, they don’t actually exist and any benefit that faith in them might impart would be nothing more than a placebo. And placebos tend to lose their effectiveness once you come to the realisation that you’ve been swallowing a sugar pill three times a day for the past month. Makes no sense to prescribe more placebo pills once the patient knows and accepts that it’s a sham.
On the other hand, if a non-placebo isn’t working as well as you’d like, or has some nasty side-effects, you can reasonably look to try an alternative or change the dosage or develop something better – it’s a starting point, not a dead end.
What you’re doing is going with the assumption that because the patient reported a change for the better with the placebo it must be just as good as the real pill.

“Secularists believe in the power of their own reason, which I don’t find convincing either.”

And yet you manage to believe in the power of your own reason on every subject other than this one.

“I haven’t seen anyone else’s that is particularly tenable, though, is the problem.”

That’s because you’re looking for something perfect where no such beast exists. Striving for the best attainable is better than grasping for something shinier and more sparkly but ultimately illusory.

“I end up arguing against secularists more than against Christians in no small part because secularists are what I have to argue with here for the most part”

You can argue against whatever certainties you imagine secularists hold (en masse it seems) without embracing the polar opposite viewpoint, which you know to be based on falsehood. I don’t much like either coffee or tea but I don’t feel the need to champion the latter when surrounded by drinkers of the former.

I’m a fallibilist through and through. If you can find anything I’ve said that comes even remotely close to being in the vicinity of the same universe as touching with a ten-foot pole another ten-foot pole that’s touching the view that “secular” moral theories or, for that matter, anything else are infallible, then I’ll gladly eat my words, and then I’ll eat the ten-foot poles for dessert.

In fact, the thesis of *this very post* was an extreme form of epistemic humility, verging on scepticism, which generalises not only to aesthetics but also (ceteris, as always, paribus) to ethics, religion, politics, knowledge of the future, the choice between boxers v. briefs, etc. The only way that thesis could be a more explicit endorsement of anti-dogmatic fallibilism is if it walked around carrying a flashing neon sign that said “I am an explicit endorsement of anti-dogmatic fallibilism no seriously I am I really really am listen you guys”

Jones; sure, but extreme skepticism and epistemic humility can be its own kind of epistemic hubris. Derrida’s a pretty good example. I mean, your post is an entertaining but fairly aggressive brief explaining to me why I’m an idiot. Reason has its passive-aggressive side, I’d say, just like religion.

Ian, I wouldn’t say I generally believe in the power of my own reason necessarily. Like I said, I think a lot of practical morality for most people, including me, is based on narrative and example, not on abstract reasoning. Similarly, rationally there’s not really much reason for me to spend so much time editing a free blog for no recompense…but here I am anyway, for reasons that don’t really have much to do with reason. My marriage is at the center of my life; is it based on disapassionate rationality, or what?

The appeal to communal living as the basis of all morality seems fairly strained; there are various different moral systems in the history of people, after all; ‘taint all one thing. The Aztecs thought it was moral to pull people’s hearts out, for example; the Nazis thought it was moral to burn large numbers of people to death. We don’t think that’s right, by and large, but there’s got to be some other heuristic than just, “well, we all happen to live together.”

It’s true the Christianity draws on lots of sources…but the belief in God is something of an anchor, surely. And, for that matter, a lot of Christian thought is perfectly happy to talk about the worth of traditions in making these decisions. You end up in a most difficult epistemic position if you start off by rejecting authority and tradition and then claim that it all has to come from logical reasoning that rejects those things.

Finally…calling God a falsehood doesn’t seem right. It’s something that can’t be proved or disproved. The moral disgust for lying which seems to be in your argument doesn’t make much sense to me in that context, though it is something I’ve heard from atheists before.

“I wouldn’t say I generally believe in the power of my own reason necessarily.”

You reason things out in articles and comments in this blog all the time. How is it you can apply reason to Wonder Woman, or Republican presidential candidates, or where to school your son but not to whether or not it’s morally okay to murder the nice old lady you meet at the bus stop?

“Like I said, I think a lot of practical morality for most people, including me, is based on narrative and example”

On socialisation, in other words. The point being that there is no evidence that such socialisation is less effective in secular societies than in religious ones (or even in closely bonded non-human ones).

“Similarly, rationally there’s not really much reason for me to spend so much time editing a free blog for no recompense…”

If you get some satisfaction out of it, that’s its own rationale, surely?

“My marriage is at the center of my life; is it based on disapassionate rationality, or what?”

I don’t see reason as being as rigid as you do. I don’t see reason being exclusive of passion either. After all, we feel passionately about things for reasons do we not?

“The appeal to communal living as the basis of all morality seems fairly strained; there are various different moral systems in the history of people, after all; ‘taint all one thing.”

It’s the basis, it’s obviously not the entirety. We have an innate desire to find shelters for ourselves too but that doesn’t mean everybody around the world is going to live in a condo rather than a yurt or a cave or a mud hut or a cardboard box in an alley. And, yes, of course we have evolved different moral systems. Mostly they have a fair amount of overlap, at least at similar stages of their civilisational development (is “civilisational” a word?) but the existence of *some* sort of moral framework is universal.

“Finally…calling God a falsehood doesn’t seem right. It’s something that can’t be proved or disproved. The moral disgust for lying which seems to be in your argument doesn’t make much sense to me in that context, though it is something I’ve heard from atheists before.”

The possibility of a god existing in some form or other can’t be disproved. The accuracy of the bible as literal truth in its entirety, and with it the entire basis for the belief in the capital G Christian God, most certainly can be disproved. Hence “falsehood”. If you were talking about morality based on some sort of airy-fairy deism rather than Christian theology (or any other religious tradition with a rulebook that can be tested and found factually wanting), you’d certainly have a point.

Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. Oh well, such is the fate of the fool who says in his heart etc.

Anyway, I agree with some of what you’ve said about exemplar-based morality and the role of reason. I consider it an open question whether (a) there are general moral principles, (b) whether people make moral judgements and decisions on the basis of such principles and (c) whether they ought to. (a) and (c) are contested in philosophy, and (b) in cognitive science, and a winner has yet to be declared.

I *don’t* consider it an open question whether morality is, or can be, based on pure reason. It isn’t, and it can’t be. Go Humean or go home.

Ian, there’s lots of Christians who don’t take the Bible literally, though. Probably the majority. The literal truth of the bible really has little to do with the truth or falsehood of Christianity as a whole, as far as I can tell.

As for this:

“we feel passionately about things for reasons do we not?”

Not necessarily. It’s not always clear why we feel passionately about things, or why we have faith in what we do. Like I said, I don’t necessarily see the most important decisions in my life as necessarily based in reason. A lot of our own motives, not to mention other people’s, are fairly opaque and mysterious, as far as I can tell.

But an inability to put your finger on a reason for something doesn’t mean there is no reason.
I don’t know why the roof of York Minster doesn’t fall down but that doesn’t mean it’s being held up by magic, that there’s no reason for it not to fall.

“there’s lots of Christians who don’t take the Bible literally, though.”

I know. And their position is even less intellectually defensible than that of those who believe every word is literally true.
Aesop’s Fables would be a better guide to life and morality.

“The literal truth of the bible really has little to do with the truth or falsehood of Christianity as a whole, as far as I can tell.”

Can you expand on that? It doesn’t, on the face of it, make a whole lot of sense unless you’re playing some really tenuous semantic games.

Hey Ian. Well, the point for a lot of Christians is not simply the literal word of the Bible, but a tradition and a community. That’s true for Catholicism certainly, but it’s true for a lot of other churches as well. Theologically it’s usually talked about in terms of the Holy Spirit.

I don’t see it as being intellectually indefensible…but that’s me.

It’s somewhat different to say that a roof fell down and I don’t know why but there must be some reason, and to say, I love this person and I don’t know why but there must be some reason. The first falls (at least theoretically) in the realm of theory and cause and effect. The second is about the human heart, which is not necessarily (or not only) a mechanistic pump.

Noah, I hate to be the one to break it to you but you don’t actually love with your heart (nor think with your gut for that matter). So, yes, your heart is just a pump.
Obviously our knowledge of neuroscience (and psychology and whatnot) is not sufficient for anybody to fully define the feelings you’re talking about (and it may well be that most of us would prefer they never did).
It certainly doesn’t follow that all the gaps in our knowledge are void of science and must instead be filled with holy spirit in order for us to grapple with them (and, in any case, to suggest such is to attempt to provide reasons for those things – the very thing you want to avoid. “God makes it happen” is still a reason).

“the point for a lot of Christians is not simply the literal word of the Bible, but a tradition and a community”

I certainly wouldn’t deny that tradition and community are important but without a belief in the basic principles that established them, they don’t, in and of themselves, constitute an actual religious philosophy. Nominal Catholics, for example, can’t very well argue against abortion or contraception or homosexuality on the basis that they are comforted by the incense and the candles.

Certainly tradition and community don’t really help me to grasp what you mean when you say that the “literal truth of the bible really has little to do with the truth or falsehood of Christianity”. It just sounds like a dodge to allow you to embrace Christianity without actually having to believe in any of it.

…An infallible guidebook to human existence that can be – and regularly is – used to simultaneously champion mutually incompatible and entirely contradictory positions is functionally useless…
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Oh, let’s look at the bright side and say it’s useful for everybody! For instance, pre-Civil War churches in North and South did the “cafeteria Christian” thing and picked bits from the “Good Book” to justify the morality of both anti- and pro-slavery positions…

—————————–
Jones, one of the Jones boys says:

…Mike’s gag about strychnine is very pertinent here, and there’s a whole other can of worms. Actually, there’s an even bigger can which is itself filled with cans of worms…
——————————

And, there are worms inside the worms! Thanks for the “pertinent” description; my “Why shouldn’t I put strychnine in the baby-bottle? ‘Objective truth’ is just a canard…” actually ties in, now that I think of it, with the religion I was raised in, Christian Science. Whose founder, Mary Baker Eddy maintained that sickness, pain, and death were just “material illusions,” and when faced with said unreal phenomena, the course of action was prayer, or meditating upon the words of Mary Baker Eddy.

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Noah Berlatsky says:

…Sneering at theologians because without god they don’t have a good answer seems like mostly a way to ignore the fact that secularists haven’t really come up with answers that make sense either, even by their own standards.
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(Sound of one jaw dropping)Yes, “non-believers” are every bit as ineffective as the “saved” when it comes to figuring out how the world works!

I’m not really embracing Christianity or believing in it. Just not assuming that a large chunk of people are necessarily stupider than I am just because they happen to believe somewhat different things. An outrageous and immoral stance, I know.

Christian theologians and thinkers have written a great deal about the relationship between reason and faith and tradition and ethics. A lot of it is thoughtful and profound, whether it’s Kant or Hauerwas or Zizek or Chesterton. Sneering at all of it just seems really narrow-minded and silly to me.

I’m not really sure what your point is about nominal Catholics. Lots of Catholics argue within the tradition that the church’s obsession with sexuality, abortion, and homosexuality is nonsense (Andrew Sullivan has a lengthy essay in the current Newsweek, I believe.) Tradition isn’t the incense and the candles, and community certainly isn’t. It’s a history of thought and a legacy of dealing with ethical issues and believes, among other things.

You’re thinking of basic principles again in terms of a rational tradition where such principles are assumed to have no purchase in tradition. You want Christianity to be a list of alogrithms that you can reject. “God exists. Abortion is bad.” It really doesn’t have to work that way, and the fact that it doesn’t work that way doesn’t make the people who believe in it dumber than you.

Mike, science is quite good at explaining things that science is good at explaining. Generalizing from that to things science isn’t so good at explaining doesn’t work so well, it seems to me.

“I’m not really embracing Christianity or believing in it. Just not assuming that a large chunk of people are necessarily stupider than I am just because they happen to believe somewhat different things”

Or, rather, patronising Christians (some of whom are, indeed, not stupid) by bending over backwards to make excuses for the undoubtedly stupid things they uncritically believe in?

“Christian theologians and thinkers have written a great deal about the relationship between reason and faith and tradition and ethics.”

Sure. But I’m having this conversation with you, not them. I like it when you present their ideas in the course of the back and forth – gives me something to chew on – but I kind of hate it when you repeatedly hide behind those ideas without ever being willing to either own or reject those ideas when they’re challenged.

The problem we have here is that you’re conflating the actual basic principles of Christianity (all-powerful bloke with a beard, virgin birth, zombie Jesus and so on) with the silvery chaff it occasionally dispenses (pacifism and whatnot). But the sparkly stuff your magpie eye so admires is peripheral to (and generally separable from) the whole word of God thing. Or, at least, you’ve never once given a solid argument for thinking that it isn’t separable – the only arguments you’ve offered are those of others who can build them on a foundation of faith that you’re lacking.
Nor are you willing to accept that the darker side of Christian tradition – the bigotry and intolerance and sectarianism and misogyny and so on – is rather more consistently present and rather more heavily weighted than the fluffy pacifism and humility bit. Can you really ask yourself how many nutjob right-wing fundamentalists your country has for every prison-reforming, draft-rejecting Quaker and still believe that the religious scales really tilt more towards collective social good than towards a medievalist cesspit?

“You want Christianity to be a list of [testable assertions] that you can reject.”

Nope, it isn’t. My religion professor in college noted how often in these discussion the old bloke with the beard gets brought up, as if that has anything in particular to do with theology.

And pacifism is absolutely central to many people’s experience of and witness of Christianity; far more so than an old guy with a beard. Just because it’s convenient for you to disbelief in a particular Christianity doesn’t mean that that Christianity has much to do with what Christians believe in — or with what I’ve gotten out of listening to and reading numerous Christian writers.

Doesn’t it behoove you to address the strongest version of the argument against your position, rather than just claiming that any bits that are inconvenient for you don’t really matter? There are absolutely lots and lots of things I don’t agree with Christians about — Hauerwas is very anti-abortion, for example, and his violent anti-modernity talk rather elides the homophobic and anti-feminist aspects of the conservative tradition in a way that I wish he wouldn’t. But his insistence that the Enlightenment turns hearts into nothing but pumps, makes a virtue of intellectual contempt, and sees both violence and the world as tools rather than as a moral challenge — those all realy resonate with me, both rationally and otherwise. And those are central to his Christian witness; they’re part of his faith, not an adjunct to it.

As far as I can tell, I’m a lot more willing to acknowledge the problems with the Christian tradition than rationalists tend to be in acknowledging the darker side of reason. I really don’t want a theocracy installed. Would you forswear a rule by technocratic experts? Or would that be ideal, do you think?

Noah, I think if we’re going to continue discussing this, you’re going to have to define “Christianity” because your (highly variable) use of the word is semantically befuddling. Personally, I’m fairly sure Christianity involves a belief in the divinity of Christ (clue’s in the name).
Without the whole Christ thing, what you’re talking about is just a sort of romantic luddism, the emotional appeal of which I kind of get but the necessary religiosity of which I really don’t.

“And those are central to his Christian witness; they’re part of his faith, not an adjunct to it.”

But they aren’t part of *yours* and you haven’t indicated what might be stopping you from applying those things to your secular life. In fact, you seem to be having no problems whatsoever incorporating anti-enlightenment thinking and soggy pacifism into your personal philosophy and you haven’t needed to let God into your life in order to do so.
So, since you don’t, why does anyone else need God in their lives to achieve the same ends?

“I really don’t want a theocracy installed.”

You might want to consider emigrating.

“Would you forswear a rule by technocratic experts?”

Who are these technocratic experts? What are they expert in? Were they popularly elected or just allocated government positions based on test scores or the metric weight of their academic credentials or the size of their brain or something?
Incidentally, if being expert in a given subject is now considered a bad thing, what value should we give to bible experts?

But, no, I don’t want to live in a technocracy any more than you do a theocracy. Thing is though Noah, in terms of senior civil servants and policy advisers, a good expert is worth a near infinite number of priests, soothsayers or druids.

You seem to be presuming that there is some measurable difference between economists, soothsayers, and druids. I’m more skeptical.

I’m not sure why pacifism is “soggy”? Because you don’t like it? Because it’s more morally serious and upright to drop bombs on people you don’t like? Or are you just making an appeal to emotional language because your rational arguments can’t work without such a crutch?

Anyway…I do get things from Christian writers, but I wouldn’t say that what I get is necessarily what they’re offering, and I certainly wouldn’t say that because I can get something from them, therefore their faith doesn’t matter. It just seems really condescending to me to insist that people don’t understand how their own faith works. And, no, I don’t think it’s condescending to acknowledge one’s debt to Christian thinkers, even if I’m not Christian myself, and even if I don’t necessarily think that I can access everything they have to say. Nor do I think it’s hypocritical to acknowledge value in worlviews that I don’t entirely share. You seem to be suggesting that only a forthright intolerance is intellectually rigorous. That seems to me to mostly be a way to be intolerant and pat yourself on the back for it, from my perspective.

The point isn’t that Christ isn’t central to Christianity. The point is that faith doesn’t necessarily need to be a series of algorithms. You insist that tradition and the spirit and faith and witness and everything having to do with Christianity doesn’t matter; the only thing that matters is a series of binary statements that you can ascribe to or deny. I’d agree that once you get to a point where faith is a series of binary statements, it kind of doesn’t work — Hume did a pretty serious number on that idea, and it was a long time ago. But once you’re deciding that everything in life is to be determined by reductivist reason, you’ve already pretty much sidelined all the interesting questions, in my view.

“You seem to be presuming that there is some measurable difference between economists, soothsayers, and druids. I’m more skeptical.”

Hah! No, I’m entirely with you on that one. I wouldn’t consider most economists to be “good experts” – they can absolutely sit in the faith camp with the druids for all I care.

“I’m not sure why pacifism is “soggy”?”

I didn’t say pacifism in general was soggy – I said your pacifism was soggy. Which was uncalled for, so apologies for that. What I meant, for what it’s worth, was that pacifism obviously involves some very hard moral questions with regard to balancing evils – we had the example earlier of the British military violently combating slavery in the 19th Century for instance – and I haven’t really seen you grapple with how one should cope with the morality of that without reason lending a hand, just vaguely suggesting that it seems like a nice idea.

“It just seems really condescending to me to insist that people don’t understand how their own faith works.”

It’s not condescending to suggest that somebody is wrong about something. If I pretended I thought all ideas were equally valid – particularly the ones I think are actually really dangerous and / or particularly misguided – that would be condescension.

“You seem to be suggesting that only a forthright intolerance is intellectually rigorous.”

Forthright as my intolerance toward religion might be (okay, is), what I’m suggesting is that only an argument that is plainly stated and ready to be defended, without recourse to circular logic or special pleading, can be intellectually rigorous.

“You insist that tradition and the spirit and faith and witness and everything having to do with Christianity doesn’t matter; the only thing that matters is a series of binary statements that you can ascribe to or deny.”

It’s more that if you can discount the deniable, tangible stuff (which I think you certainly can), the rest seems to me to be founded on untruth and I’m not sure how much good you can expect to come from that or how sustainable it can be.

If there’s no basis to the bible, at least in its broadest strokes, there’s no basis to Christianity as an organised religion. That doesn’t negate faith or a god but it does negate Christian faith and the Christian God. That’s just common sense. And all you’re left with then is some sort of vague deism. Or conversion to a religion that’s never been anywhere near the Middle East (at which point, rinse and repeat). Or…atheism.

“But once you’re deciding that everything in life is to be determined by reductivist reason, you’ve already pretty much sidelined all the interesting questions, in my view.”

I don’t think everything needs to be consciously reasoned. I do think structured world views such as religions, which impact billions of people and have huge implications for all of us – sometimes catastrophic implications – should be examined and tested and challenged. In fact I think it would be remiss of us – immoral even – not to do so.

“Doesn’t it behoove you to address the strongest version of the argument against your position, rather than just claiming that any bits that are inconvenient for you don’t really matter?”

I’m mostly sitting this one out, but I can’t help say something here. It *does* seem to me that, when it comes to theology, and Christianity more generally, you go out of your way to present the most charitable, reasonable and nuanced interpretation possible…which is precisely what devil’s advocates (or Christ’s advocates) should do! But when it comes to “the other guys”, however they be defined, it turns out that they’re a bunch of dimwits who believe the dopiest things imaginable e.g. they think that “faith [does] necessarily need to be a series of algorithms”, which is an utter nonsense that no one could possibly believe. (I mean that, literally, it does not make any sense; it’s a category mistake). I know they don’t have any brains, but even straw men aren’t *totally* stupid.

In other words [in Big Lebowski voice]: like, look to the beam in thine own eye, man.